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INSECT ADVENTURES 



Petty truths, I shall be told, those presented by the habits 
of a spider or a grasshopper. There are no petty truths 
today; there is but one truth, whose looking-glass to our 
uncertain eyes seems broken, though its every fragment, 
whether reflecting the evolution of a planet or the flight 
of a bee, contains the supreme law. 

Maurice Maeterlinck 




"What a day it was when I first became a herdsman 
or ducks!" 



INSECT 
ADVENTURES 



J BY 

Jr HENRI FABRE 



^ • ■ (i.(:t^^^r»v'..\ 



Selections from Alexander Teixeira de Mattos* 
Translation of Fabre's "Souvenirs Entomologiques'' 

EETOLD FOR YOUNG PEOPLE 
BY 

LOUISE SEYMOUR HASBROUCK 

ILLUSTRATED BY 

ELIAS GOLDBERG 




NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
1917 



1^1 J 



COPYRIGHT, 1917, 
By DODD, mead & COMPANY, Inc. 



NOV 14 1917 



Ci,A47S207 



PREFACE 

JEAN HENRI FABRE, author of the long series 
^ of ^'Souvenirs Entomologiques" from which these 
studies are taken, was a French school-teacher and 
scientist whose peculiar gift for the observation and 
description of Insect life won for him the title of the 
"insects' Homer.'* A distinguished English critic 
says of him, *'Fabre is the wisest man, and the best 
read in the book of nature, of whom the centuries 
have left us any record." The fact that he was 
mainly self-taught, and that his life was an unending 
struggle with poverty and disappointment, increases 
our admiration for his wonderful achievements in 
natural science. 

A very interesting account of his early years, given 
by himself, will be found in Chapter XVII of this 
volume. The salaries of rural teachers and profes- 
sors were extremely small in France during the last 
century, and Fabre, who married young, could barely 
support his large family. Nature study was not 
in the school curriculum, and it was years before he 
could devote more than scanty spare hours to the 
work. At the age of thirty-two, however, he pub- 
lished the first volume of his insect studies. It at- 
tracted the attention of scientists and brought him 
a prize from the French Institute. Other volumes 
were published from time to time, but some of 
Fabre's fellow scientists were displeased because the 

7' 



8 PREFACE 

books were too interesting! They feared, said 
Fabre, "lest a page that is read without fatigue 
should not always be the expression of the truth." 
He defended himself from this extraordinary com- 
plaint in a characteristic way. 

*'Come here, one and all of you," he addressed his 
friends, the insects. "You, the sting-bearers, and 
you, the wing-cased armor-clads — take up my de- 
fense and bear witness in my favor. Tell of the inti- 
mate terms on which I live with you, of the patience 
with which I observe you, of the care with which I 
record your actions. Your evidence is unanimous; 
yes, my pages, though they bristle not with hollow 
formulas or learned smatterings, are the exact nar- 
rative of facts observed, neither more nor less; and 
whoso cares to question you in his turn will obtain 
the same replies. 

"And then, my dear insects, if you cannot con- 
vince these good people, because you do not carry 
the weight of tedium, I, in my turn, will say to them : 

"'You rip up the animal and I study it alive; 
you turn it into an object of horror and pity, where- 
as I cause it to be loved; you labor in a torture- 
chamber and dissecting-room, I make my observa- 
tion under the blue sky to the song of the cicadas; 
you subject cell and protoplasm to chemical tests, I 
study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you pry 
Into death, I pry into life. ... I write above all for 
the young. I want to make them love the natural 
history which you make them hate ; and that is why, 
while keeping strictly in the domain of truth, I avoid 



PREFACE 9 

your scientific prose, which too often, alas, seents 
borrowed from some Iroquois idiom.' " 

Fabre, though an inspiring teacher, had no talent 
for pushing himself, and did not advance beyond 
an assistant professorship at a tiny salary. The 
other professors at Avignon, where he taught for 
twenty years, were jealous of him because his lec- 
tures on natural history attracted much attention, 
and nicknamed him "the Fly." He was turned out 
of his house at short notice because the owners, 
two maiden ladles, had been influenced by his ene- 
mies, who considered his teachings in natural history 
irreligious. Many years later, the invaluable text- 
books he had written were discontinued from use 
in the schools because they contained too much re- 
ligion! A process which he invented for the ex- 
traction of dye from madder flowers, by which he 
hoped to make himself independent, proved un- 
profitable on account of the appearance on the mar- 
ket of the cheaper aniline dyes. 

Though unknown during most of his lifetime to 
the world at large, Fabre through his writings 
gained the friendship of several celebrated men. 
Charles Darwin called him the '^incomparable ob- 
server." The Minister of Education in France In- 
vited him to Paris and had him made a Cheva- 
lier, of the Legion of Honor, and presented him to 
the Emperor, Napoleon III. Fie was offered the 
post of tutor to the Prince Imperial, but preferred 
his country life and original researches, even though 
they meant continued poverty. 



lo PREFACE 

At last, after forty years of drudgery, Fabre se- 
cured from his textbooks a small independent In- 
come, which released him from teaching and enabled 
him to buy at Serignan a house and garden of his 
own, and a small piece of waste ground, dedicated 
to thistles and insects — a *'cursed ground," he 
wrote, *'which no one would have as a gift to sow 
with a pinch of turnip seed," but "an earthly para- 
dise for bees and wasps" — and, on that account, 
for him also. 

"It is a little late, O my pretty insects," he adds — 
he was at this time over sixty; "I greatly fear the 
peach is offered to me only when I am beginning to 
have no teeth wherewith to eat it." He lived, how- 
ever, to spend many years at his chosen studies. 

During the last years of his life his fame spread, 
and in 19 lo, in his eighty-eighth year, some of his 
admirers arranged a jubilee celebration for him at 
Serignan. Many famous men attended, and letters 
and telegrams poured in from all parts of the world. 
He died five years later, at the age of ninety-two. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I My First Pond 7 

II The Caddis-Worm 21 

III The Mason-Bees 27 

IV Bees, Cats and Red Ants 39 

V The Mining Bees 52 

VI The Leaf-Cutting Bees 68 

VII The Cotton-Bees and Resin-Bees . . 75 

VIII The Hairy Sand-Wasp 83 

IX The Wasp and the Cricket .... 96 

X The Fly-Hunting Wasp 103 

XI Parasites 115 

XII Fly Scavengers 123 

XIII The Pine Caterpillar 125 

XIV The Cabbage Caterpillar .... 151 
XV The Great Peacock Moths . . . . 157 

XVI The Truffle-Hunting Beetle . . . 161 

XVII The Boy Who Loved Insects . . . 167 

XVIII The Banded Spider 189 

XIX The Tarantula 199 

XX The Clotho Spider 227 

XXI The Spiders' Telegraph-Wire . . . 232 

XXII The Crab Spider 238 

XXIII The Labyrinth Spider 247 

XXIV The Building of a Spider's Web . . 256 
XXV The Geometry of a Spider's Web . . 266 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

What a Day It Was When I First Became a Herds- 
man of Ducks ! {Frontispiece) 4 

I Think of the King's Crown of the Princesses' 

Necklace 25 

The Flowers Which Deck the Mountain Streams 
With Gold Supply Her With Sugary Liquid 
and Pollen 41 

"Be Off, or You'll Catch It!" Says the Doorkeep- 

ing Bee jt, 

What Pattern that She Carries in Her Mind Guides 

Her Scissors? 83 

The Gorgeous Drama 102 

One Day, Bang! 119 

When Winter is Near They Will Build a Stronger 

Tent 139 

They Proceed in Single File 146 

The Fire Was Not Exactly Lit for Us . . . . 183 

Does She Help Them to Regain Their Place on Her 

Back? 226 

The Slanting Cord Is a Telegraph Wire .... 244 

Like the Finish of a Fire- Works Display . . . 255 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




CHAPTER I 



MY FIRST POND 



1AM never tired of looking in a pond. What busy 
life there is in that green world ! On the warm 
mud of the edges, the Frog's little Tadpole basks and 
frisks in its black legions; down in the water, the 
orange-bellied Newt steers his way slowly with the 
broad rudder of his flat tail; among the reeds are 
stationed the little fleets of the Caddis-worms, half- 
protruding from their tubes, which are now a tiny 
bit of stick and again a tower of little shells. 

In the deep places, the Water-beetle dives, carry- 
ing with him his extra supply of breath, an air-bubble 
at the tip of the wing-cases and, under the chest, a 
film of gas that gleams like a silver breast plate ; on 
the surface, the ballet of those shimmering pearls, 
the Whirligigs, turns and twists about; hard by, 
there swims the troop of the Pond-skaters, who glide 
along with side-strokes like those which the cobbler 
makes when sewing. 

17 



1 8 INSECT ADVENTURES 

Here are the Water-boatmen, who swim on their 
backs with two oars spread crosswise, and the flat 
Water-scorpions; here, clad in mud, is the grub of 
the largest of our Dragon-flies, so curious because 
of its manner of moving: it fills its hinder parts, a 
yawning funnel, with water, spirts it out again and 
advances just so far as the recoil of its water cannon. 

There are plenty of peaceful Shellfish. At the 
bottom, the plump River-snails discreetly raise their 
lid, opening ever so little the shutters of their dwell- 
ing; on the level of the water, in the glades of the 
water-garden, the Pond-snails take the air. Dark 
Leeches writhe upon their prey, a chunk of Earth- 
worm ; thousands of tiny, reddish grubs, future Mos- 
quitoes, go spinning around and twist and curve like 
so many graceful Dolphins. 

Yes, a stagnant pool, though but a few feet wide, 
hatched by the sun, is an immense world, a marvel 
to the child who, tired of his paper boat, amuses 
himself by noticing what is happening in the water. 
Let me tell what I remember of my first pond, which 
I explored when I was seven years old. 

We had nothing but the little house inherited by 
my mother, and its patch of garden. Our money was 
almost all gone. What was to be done? That 
was the stern question which father and mother sat 
talking over one evening. 

Do you remember Hop-o'-My-Thumb, who hid 
under the wood-cutter's stool and listened to 
his parents overcome by want? I was like him. 
I also listened, pretending to sleep, with my elbows 



MY FIRST POND 



19 




on the table. It was not blood-curdling designs that 
I heard but grand plans that set my heart rejoicing. 

"Suppose we breed some ducks," says mother. 
"They sell very well in town. Henri would mind 
them and take them down to the brook. And we 
could feed them on the grease from the tallow-fac- 
tory, which they say is excellent for ducks, and which 
we could buy for a small price." 

"Very well," says father, "let's breed some ducks. 
There may be difficulties In the way; but we'll have 
a try." 

That night I had dreams of paradise : I was with 
my ducklings, clad in their yellow suits ; I took them 
to the pond, I watched them have their bath, I 



20 INSECT ADVENTURES 

brought them back again, carrying the more tired 
ones in a basket. 

A month or two after the little birds of my 
dreams were a reality. There were twenty-four of 
them. They had been hatched by two hens, of whom 
one, the big black one, was an inmate of the house, 
while the other was borrowed from a neighbor. 

To bring them up, the big, black hen is enough, 
so careful is she of her adopted family. At first 
everything goes perfectly: a tub with two fingers' 
depth of water serves as a pond. On sunny days 
the ducklings bathe in it under the anxious eye of 
the hen. 

Two weeks later, the tub no longer satisfies. It 
contains neither cresses crammed with tiny Shellfish 
nor Worms and Tadpoles, dainty morsels both. The 
time has come for dives and hunts among the tangle 
of the water-weeds; and for us the day of trouble 
has also come. How are we, right up at the top of 
the hill, to get water enough for a pond for our 
broods ? In summer, we have hardly water to drink ! 

Near the house there is only a scanty spring from 
which four or five families besides ourselves draw 
their water with copper pails. By the time that the 
schoolmaster's donkey has quenched her thirst and 
the neighbors have taken their provision for the day, 
the spring-basin is dry. We have to wait four-and- 
twenty hours for it to fill. No, there is no place there 
for ducklings. 

There is a brook at the foot of the hill, but to 
go down to it with the troop of ducklings is danger- 



MY FIRST POND 21 

ous. On the way through the village we might meet 
murdering cats, or some surly dog might frighten 
and scatter the little band; and it would be a puz- 
zling task to collect them all again. But there is still 
another spot, part way up the hill, where there is a 
meadow and a pond of some size. It is very quiet 
there, and the place can be reached by a deserted 
footpath. The duckhngs will be well off. 

What a day it was when I first became a herds- 
man of ducks ! Why must there be a drawback to 
such joys? Walking on the hard stones had given 
me a large and painful blister on the heel. If I 
had wanted to put on the shoes stowed away in the 
cupboard for Sundays and holidays, I could not. I 
had to go barefoot over the broken stones, dragging 
my leg and carrying high the Injured heel. 

The ducks, too, poor little things, had sensitive 
soles to their feet; they limped, they quacked with 
fatigue. They would have refused to go any farther 
towards the pond If I had not, from time to time, 
called a halt under the shelter of an ash. 

We are there at last. The place could not be bet- 
ter for my birdlets : shallow, tepid water, with a few 

1^ 




22 INSECT ADVENTURES 

muddy knolls and little green islands. The pleasures 
of the bath begin at once. The ducklings clap their 
beaks and rummage here, there, and everywhere; 
they sift each mouthful, throwing out the clear water 
and swallowing the good bits. In the deeper parts 
they point their tails into the air and stick their 
heads under water. They are happy: and it is a 
blessed thing to see them at work. I too am enjoy- 
ing the pond. 

What is this? On the mud lie some loose, knot- 
ted, soot-covered cords. One might take them for 
threads of wool like those which you pull out of 
an old ravelly stocking. Can some shepherdess^ 
knitting a black sock and finding her work turn out 
badly, have begun all over again and, in her impa- 
tience, have thrown down the wool with all the 
dropped stitches? It really looks like it. 

I take up one of those cords in my hand. It is 
sticky and very loose; the thing slips through my 
fingers before they can catch hold of it. A few of 
the knots burst and shed their contents. What comes 
out is a black ball, the size of a pin's head, followed 
by a flat tail. I recognize, on a very small scale, a 
familiar object: the Tadpole, the Frog's baby. 

Here are some other creatures. They spin around 
on the surface of the water and their black backs 
gleam in the sun. If I lift a hand to seize them, that 
moment they disappear, I do not know where. It's 
a pity; I should have liked much to see them closer 
and to make them wriggle in a little bowl which I 
should have put ready for them. 



MY FIRST POND 23 

Let us look at the bottom of the water, pulling 
aside those bunches of green string from which beads 
of air are rising and gathering Into foam. There Is 
something of everything underneath. I see pretty 
shells with compact whorls, flat as beans; I notice 
little worms carrying tufts and feathers ; I make out 
some with flabby fins constantly flapping on their 
backs. What are they all doing there? What are 
their names? I do not know. And I stare at them 
for ever so long, held by the mystery of the waters. 

At the place where the pond dribbles into the 
near-by field, are some alder-trees ; and here I make 
a glorious find. It is a Beetle — not a very large one, 
oh, no ! He is smaller than a cherry-stone, but of an 
unutterable blue. The angels in paradise must wear 
dresses of that color. I put the glorious one inside 
an empty snail-shell, which I plug up with a leaf. I 
shall admire that living jewel at my leisure, when I 
get back. Other things call me away. 

The spring that feeds the pond trickles from the 
rock, cold and clear. The water first collects into a 
cup, the size of the hollow of one's two hands, and 
then runs over in a stream. These falls call for a 
mill : that goes without saying. I build one with two 
bits of straw, crossed on an axis, and supported by 
flat stones set on edge. The mill is a great success. 
I am sorry I have no playmates but the ducklings 
to admire it. 

Let us contrive a dam to hold back the waters 
and form a pool. There are plenty of stones for 
the brickwork. I pick the most suitable; I break 



24 INSECT ADVENTURES 

the larger ones. And, while collecting these blocks, 
suddenly I forget all about the dam which I meant 
to build. 

On one of the broken stones, in a hole large 
enough for me to put my fist into, something gleams 
like glass. The hollow is lined with facets gathered 
in sixes which flash and glitter in the sun. I have 
seen something like this in church, on the great 
saints'-days, when the light of the candles in the big 
chandelier kindles the stars in its hanging crystal. 

We children, lying, in summer, on the straw of 
the threshing-floor, have told one another stories of 
the treasures which a dragon guards underground. 
Those treasures now return to my mind : the names 
of precious stones ring out uncertainly but gloriously 
in my memory. I think of the king's crown, of the 
princesses' necklaces. In breaking stones, can I have 
found, but on a much richer scale, the thing that 
shines quite small in my mother's ring? I want more 
such. 

The dragon of the subterranean treasures treats 
me generously. He gives me his diamonds in such 
quantities that soon I possess a heap of broken stones 
sparkling with magnificent clusters. He does more : 
he gives me his gold. The trickle of water from the 
rock falls on a bed of fine sand which it swirls into 
bubbles. If I bend over towards the light, I see 
something like gold-filings whirling where the fall 
touches the bottom. Is it really the famous metal 
of which twenty-franc pieces, so rare with us at home, 
are made? One would think so, from the glitter. 














m 












**I THINK OF THE KING'S CROWN, OF THE PRINCESSES* 
NECKLACE." 



26 INSECT ADVENTURES 

I take a pinch of sand and place it In my palm. 
The brilliant particles are numerous, but so small 
that I have to pick them up with a straw moistened 
in my mouth. Let us drop this: they are too tiny 
and too bothersome to collect. The big, valuable 
lumps must be farther on, In the thickness of the 
rock. We'll come back later; we'll blast the moun- 
tain. 

I break more stones. Oh, what a queer thing has 
just come loose, all in one piece ! It Is turned spiral- 
wise, like certain flat Snails that come out of the 
cracks of old walls In rainy weather. With Its 
gnarled sides, it looks like a little ram's-horn. How 
do things like that find their way Into the stone ? 

Treasures and curiosities make my pockets bulge 
with pebbles. It Is late and the little ducklings have 
had all they want to eat. "Come along, youngsters," 
I say to them, "let's go home." My blistered heel is 
forgotten in my excitement. 

The walk back is a delight, as I think of all the 
wonderful things I have found. But a sad dis- 
appointment Is waiting for me when I reach home. 
My parents catch sight of my bulging pockets, with 
their disgraceful load of stones. The cloth has 
given way under the rough and heavy burden. 

"You rascal!" says father, at sight of the damage. 
"I send you to mind the ducks and you amuse your- 
self picking up stones, as though there weren't 
enough of them all round the house ! Make haste 
and throw them away!" 

Broken-hearted, I obey. Diamonds, gold-dust, 



MY FIRST POND 



27 




petrified ram's-horn, heavenly Beetle, are all flung on 
a rubbish-heap outside the door. 

Mother bev/ails her lot : 

*'A nice thing, bringing up children to see them 
turn out so badly! You'll bring me to my grave. 
Green stuff I don't mind: It does for the rabbits. But 
stones, which ruin your pockets; poisonous animals, 
which'll sting your hand: what good are they to you, 
silly? There's no doubt about It; some one has 
thrown a spell over you I" 

Poor mother I She was right. A spell had been 



2 8 INSECT ADVENTURES 

cast upon me — a spell which Nature herself had 
woven. In later years I found out that the diamonds 
of the duck-pool were rock-crystal, the gold-dust, 
mica; but the fascination of the pond held good for 
all that. It was full of secrets that were worth more 
to me than diamonds or gold. 




THE GLASS POND 

Have you ever had an indoor pond? Such a pond 
is easy to make and one can watch the life of the 
water in it even better than outdoors, where the 
ponds are too large and have too much In them. Be- 
sides, when out-of-doors, one is likely to be disturbed 
by passers-by. 

For my indoor pond, the blacksmith made me a 
framework of iron rods. The carpenter, who is 
also a glazier, set the framework on a wooden base 
and supplied it with a movable board as a lid; he 
then fixed thick panes of glass in the four sides. The 
bottom of the pond was made of tarred sheet Iron, 
and had a trap to let the water out. The contriv- 
ance looked very well, standing on a little table In 
front of a sunny window. It held about ten or twelve 
gallons. 



MY FIRST POND 29 

I put In it first some limy Incrustations with which 
certain springs In my neighborhood cover the dead 
clumps of rushes. It Is light, full of holes, and looks 
a little like a coral reef. Moreover, It Is covered 
with a short, green, velvety moss of tiny pond-weed. 
I count upon this pond-weed to keep the water 
healthy. How? Let us see. 

The living creatures in the pond fill the water, 
just as living people fill the air, with gases unfit to 
breathe. Somehow the pond must get rid of these 
gases, or Its Inhabitants will die. This Is what the 
pond-weed does; It breathes In and burns up the 
unwholesome gases, changing them Into a life-giving 
gas. 

If you will look at the pond when the sun Is shin- 
ing on It, you will see this change take place. How 
beautiful the water-weeds are ! The green-carpeted 
reef Is lit up with countless sparkling points and 
looks like a fairy lawn of velvet, studded with thou- 
sands of diamond pin-heads. From this exquisite 
jewelry pearls constantly break loose and are at 
once replaced by others; slowly they rise, like tiny 
globes of light. They spread on every side. It Is 
a constant display of fireworks In the depth of the 
water. 

This Is what Is really happening: The weeds are 
decomposing — that Is, separating Into Its elements 
— the unwholesome carbonic acid gas with which the 
water Is filled; they keep the carbon to use In their 
own cells ; they breathe out the oxygen In tiny bubbles, 
the pearls that you have seen. These partly dis- 



30 INSECT ADVENTURES 

solve in the water, making it healthful for the little 
water-creatures to breathe, and partly reach the sur- 
face, where they vanish in the air, making it good 
for us to breathe. 

No matter how often I see it, I cannot help being 
interested in this everyday marvel of a bundle of 
weeds purifying a stagnant pool; I look with a 
delighted eye upon the ceaseless spray of spreading 
bubbles; I see in imagination the prehistoric times 
when seaweed, the first-born of plants, produced the 
first atmosphere for living things to breathe at the 
time when the land of the continents was beginning 
to rise out of the oceans. What I see before my 
eyes, between the glass panes of my pond, tells me 
the story of the planet surrounding itself with pure 
air. 




CHAPTER II 

THE CADDIS-WORM 

[The caddis-worm is the grub of the caddls-fly, 
which is like a small moth and is often seen flitting 
over our streams and ponds. There are about one 
hundred and fifty species of this fly in America.] 

WHOM shall I lodge in my glass trough, 
kept always wholesome by the action of 
the water-weeds? 1 shall keep Caddis-worms, those 
insects which clothe themselves with little sticks and 
other materials. They are among the most ingenious 
of the self-clothing insects. 

The particular species of Caddis-worm I have 
chosen is found in muddy-bottomed, stagnant pools 
crammed with small reeds. It is the little grub that 
carries through the still waters a bundle of tiny frag- 
ments fallen from the reeds. Its sheath, a travel- 

31 



32 INSECT ADVENTURES 

ing house, is an elaborate piece of w'ork, made of 
many different materials. 

The young worms, the beginners, start with a 
sort of deep basket in wicker-work, made of small, 
stiff roots, long steeped and peeled under water. 
The grub that has made a find of these fibers saws 
them with its jaws and cuts them into little straight 
sticks, which it fixes one by one to the edge of its 
basket, always crosswise. This pile of spikes is a 
fine protection, but hard to steer through the tangle 
of water-plants. Sooner or later the worm forsakes 
it, and builds with round bits of wood, browned by 
the water, often as wide as a thick straw and a 
finger's breadth long, more or less — taking them as 
chance supplies them. 

It does not always use wood, however. If there 
are plenty of small, dead Pond-snails in the pond, all 
of the same size, the Caddis-worm makes a splendid 
patchwork scabbard; with a cluster of slender roots, 
reduced by rotting to their stiff, straight, woody axis, 
it manufactures pretty specimens of wicker-work like 
baskets. With grains of rice, which I gave the 
grubs in my glass pond as an experiment, they built 
themselves magnificent towers of ivory. Next to the 
sheaths of snail-shells, this was the prettiest thing I 
ever saw the Caddis-worms make. 



THE CADDIS-WORM 33 



THE pirates' attack 



What is the use of these houses which the Caddis- 
worms carry about with them? I catch a glimpse 
of the reason for making them. My glass pond was 
at first occupied by a dozen Water-beetles, whose 
diving performances are so curious to watch. One 
day, meaning no harm and for want of a better place 
to put them, I fling among them a couple of handfuls 
of Caddis-worms. Blunderer that I am, what have I 
done! The pirate Water-beetles, hiding in the 
rugged corners of the rockwork, at once perceive the 
windfall. They rise to the surface with great 
strokes of their oars; they hasten and fling them- 
selves upon the crowd of carpenter Caddis-worms. 
Each Beetle grabs a sheath by the middle and tries 
to rip it open by tearing off shells and sticks. While 
this is going on, the Caddis-worm, close-pressed, ap- 
pears at the mouth of the sheath, slips out, and 
quickly escapes under the eyes of the Water-beetle, 
who appears to notice nothing. 

The brutal ripper of sheaths does not see the little 
worm, like a white sausage,, that slips between his 
legs, passes under his fangs, and madly flees. He 
continues to tear away the outer case and to tug 
at the silken lining. When the breach is made, he is 
quite crestfallen at not finding what he expected. 

Poor fool ! Your victim went out under your nose 
and you never saw it. The worm has sunk to the 
bottom and taken refuge in the mysteries of the rock- 



34 INSECT ADVENTURES 

work. If things were happening in a larger, outdoor 
pond, It IS clear that, with their clever way of remov- 
ing themselves, most of the worms would escape scot- 
free. Fleeing to a distance and recovering from 




the sharp alarm, they would build themselves a new 
scabbard, and all would be over until the next attack, 
which would be foiled all over again by the very 
same trick! 



THE CADDIS-WORM 35 



AN INSECT SUBMARINE 

Caddis-worms are able to remain on the level of 
the water indefinitely with no other support than 
their house ; they can rest In unsinkable flotillas and 
can even shift their place by working the rudder. 

How do they do it? Do their sticks make a sort 
of raft? Can the shells contain a few bubbles of air 
and serve as floats? Let us see. 

I remove a number of Caddis-worms from their 
sheaths and put the sheaths in the water. Not one 
of them floats, neither those made of shells nor 
those of woody materials. The Worm also, when 
removed from its tube, is unable to float. 

This is how the Worm manages. When at rest, 
at the bottom of the pond. It fills the whole of the 
tube of its sheath. When it wishes to reach the top 
of the pond, it climbs up the reeds, dragging its house 
of sticks with it; then It sticks the front of its body 
out of the sheath, leaving a vacant space in the rear, 
like the vacuum in a pump when one draws out the 
piston. This promptly fills with air, enabling the 
Worm to float, sheath and all, just as the air in a 
life-preserver holds a person up in the water. The 
Caddis-worm does not need to cling to the grasses 
any longer. It can move about on the surface of the 
pond, in the glad sunlight. 

To be sure, it is not very talented as a boatman. 
But it can turn round, tack about and shift its place 
slightly by using the front part of its body, which is 



36 INSECT ADVENTURES 

out of the tube, as a rudder and paddle ; and that Is 
all It wishes to do. When It has had enough of the 
sun, and thinks It time to return to the quiet of the 
mud-bed at the bottom, it draws itself back into Its 
sheath, expelling the air, and at once begins to sink. 
We have our submarines — the Caddis-worms 
have theirs. They can come out of the water, they 
can dip down and even stop at mid-depth by releas- 
ing gradually the surplus air. And this apparatus, 
so perfectly balanced, so skillful, requires no knowl- 
edge on the part of Its maker. It comes into being 
of Itself, In accordance with the plans of the uni- 
versal harmony of things. 







vn ^ 



CHAPTER III 



THE MASON-BEES 



AT a school where I once taught, one, subject 
in particular appealed to both master and 
pupils. This was open-air geometry, practical sur- 
veying. When May came, once every week we left 
the gloomy schoolroom for the fields. It was a 
regular holiday. We did our surveying on an un- 
tilled plain, covered with flowering thyme and 
rounded pebbles. There was room there for mak- 
ing every sort of triangle or polygon. 

Well, from the very first day, my attention was 
attracted by something suspicious. If I sent one of 
the boys to plant a stake, I would see him stop fre- 
quently on his way, bend down, stand up again, look 
about and stoop once more, neglecting his straight 
line and his signals. Another, who was told to pick 
up the arrows, would forget and take up a pebble 
instead; and a third, instead of measuring angles, 
would crumble a clod of earth between his fingers. 

37 



38 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




Most of them were caught licking a bit of straw. 
The surveying suffered. What could the mystery be ? 
I inquired; and everything was explained. The 
scholars had known for a long time what the master 
had not yet heard of, namely, that there was a big 
black Bee who made clay nests on the pebbles In 
the fields. These nests contained honey; and my 
surveyors used to open them and empty the cells with 
a straw. The honey, although rather strong-fla- 
vored, was most acceptable. I grew fond of it my- 
self, and joined the nest-hunters, putting off the les- 



THE MASON-BEES 39 

son until later. It was thus that I first made the ac- 
quaintance of the Mason-bee. 

The Bee herself Is a magnificent Insect, with dark- 
violet wings and a black-velvet dress. We have two 
kinds of Mason-bees In our district: this one, who 
builds by herself on walls or pebbles, and the Sicilian 
Mason-bee, who builds In colonies under sheds and 
roofs. Both use the same kind of material: hard 
clay, mixed with a little sand and kneaded Into a 
paste with the Bee's own saliva, forming, when dry, 
a sort of hard cement. 

Man's masonry Is formed of stones laid one above 
the other and cemented together with lime. The 
Mason-bee's work can bear comparison with ours. 
Instead of stones, she uses big pieces of gravel. She 
chooses them carefully one by one, picks out the hard- 
est bits, generally with corners, which, fitting one 
Into the other, make a solid whole. She holds them 
together with layers of her mortar, sparingly ap- 
plied. Thus the outside of her cell looks like a rough 
stone house; but the Inside, which must be smooth 
In order not to hurt the Bee-baby's tender skin, Is 
covered with a coat of pure mortar. This Inner 
whitewash, however. Is not put on artistically, but In 
great splashes; and the grub takes care, after It has 
finished eating Its honey, to make Itself a cocoon and 
hang the walls of Its room with silk. 

When the cell Is finished, the Bee at once sets to 
work to provide food for It. The flowers round 
about, especially those of the yellow broom, which 
in May deck the pebbly borders of the mountain 



40 INSECT ADVENTURES 

streams with gold, supply her with sugary liquid and 
pollen. She comes with her crop swollen with honey 
and her body yellowed underneath with pollen-dust. 
She dives headfirst into the cell; and for a few mo- 
ments you see her jerk violently as she empties her 
crop of the honey-sirup. Afterwards, she comes 
out of the cell, only to go in again at once, but this 
time backwards. The Bee now brushes the lower 
side of her abdomen with her two hind-legs and rids 
herself of her load of pollen. Once more she comes 
out and once more goes in headfirst. It is a ques- 
tion of stirring the materials, with her jaws for a 
spoon, and making the whole into a smooth mixture. 
She does not do this after every journey; only once 
in a while, when she has gathered a good deal of 
food. 

When the cell is half full of food, she thinks there 
Is enough. An egg must now be laid on top of 
the paste and the house must be closed. All this is 
done quickly. The cover is a lid of pure mortar, 
which the Bee builds by degrees, working from the 
outside to the center. Two days at most appeared 
to me to be enough for everything, provided that no 
bad weather — rain or merely clouds — came to in- 
terrupt the work. Then a second cell is built, with 
Its back to the first and provisioned in the same 
manner. A third, a fourth, and so on follow, each 
supplied with honey and an egg and closed before 
the foundations of the next are laid. 

When all the cells are finished, the Bee builds a 
thick cover over the group, to protect her grub-babies 














"The flowers which deck the mountain streams with 

GOLD SUPPLY HER WITH SUGARY LIQUID AND POLLEN." 



42 INSECT ADVENTURES 

from damp, heat and cold. This cover is made of 
the usual mortar, but on this occasion with no small 
stones in it. The Bee applies it pellet by pellet, 
trowelful by trowelful, to the depth of about a third 
of an inch over the cluster of cells, which disappear 
entirely under the clay covering. When this is done, 
the nest has the shape of a rough dome, equal in 
size to half an orange. One would take it for a 
round lump of mud which had been thrown and half 
crushed against a stone and had then dried where it 
was. This outer covering dries as quickly as the 
cement we use in our houses; and the nest is soon 
almost as hard as a stone. 

Instead of building a brand-new nest on a hitherto 
unoccupied bowlder, the Mason-bee of the Walls is 
always glad to make use of old nests built the year 
before. These need only a little repair to put them 
in good condition. The Bee who has chosen one of 
these nests looks about to see what parts need repair- 
ing, tears off the strips of cocoon hanging from the 
walls, removes the fragments of clay that fell from 
the ceiling when the young Bee of the preceding year 
bored her way through it, gives a coat of mortar to 
parts that need it, mends the opening a little, and 
that is all. She then goes about storing honey and 
laying her egg, as she would in a new cell. When all 
the cells, one after the other, are thus furnished, the 
Bee puts a few touches on the outer dome of cement, 
if it needs them; and she is through. 

From one and the same nest there come out sev- 
eral inhabitants, brothers and sisters, the males with 



THE MASON-BEES 43 

a bright brick-red fleece, and the female of a splendid 
velvety black, with dark-violet wings. They are all 
the children of the Bee who built or repaired and 
furnished the cells. The male Bees lead a careless 
existence, never work, and do not return to the clay 
houses except for a brief moment to woo the ladies ; 
they have nothing to do with the housekeeping or 
the new nests. What they want is the nectar in the 
flower-cups, not mortar to build with. There are 
left the sisters, who will be the mothers of the next 
family. As sisters, they all have equal rights to the 
nest. They do not go by this rule, however. The 
nest belongs to the one who first takes possession of 
it. If any of the others or any neighbors dispute her 
ownership, she fights them until they have the worst 
of it and fly away, leaving her in peace. 

AN ENEMY OF THE MASON-BEE 

All IS not smooth sailing after the Mason-bee has 
finished building her dome of cells. It is then that 
a certain Stelis-wasp, much smaller than the Mason- 
bee, appears, looks carefully at the outside of the 
Mason-bee's home, and makes up her mind, weak 
and small as she Is, to introduce her eggs into this 
cement fortress. Everything is most carefully closed: 
a layer of rough plaster, at least two fifths of an 
inch thick, entirely covers the cells, which are each 
of them sealed with a thick mortar plug. The plaster 
is almost as hard as a rock. Never mind I The little 
insect is going to reach the honey In those cells. 



44 INSECT ADVENTURES 

She pluckily sets to. Atom by atom, she drives a 
hole in the plaster and scoops out a shaft just large 
enough to let her through; she reaches the lid of the 
cell and gnaws it till she catches sight of the honey. 
It Is a slow and painful process, In which the feeble 
Wasp wears herself out. I find it hard to break the 
plaster with the point of my knife. How much 
harder, then, for the insect, with her tiny pincers ! 

When she reaches the honey, the Stelis-wasp slips 
through and, on the surface of the provisions, side 
by side with the Mason-bee's, she lays a number of 
her own eggs. The honey-food will be the common 
property of all the new arrivals, the Stells-wasp's 
grubs as well as the Mason-bee's. 

The next thing for the parasite Wasp to do is 
to wall up the opening she has made, so that other 
robbers cannot get In. At the foot of the nest, the 
Wasp collects a little red earth; she makes It Into 
mortar by wetting It with saliva ; and with the pel- 
lets thus prepared she fills up the entrance shaft as 
neatly as if she were a master-mason. The mortar, 
being red, shows up against the Bee's house, which 
is white; so when we see the red speck on the pale 
background of the Bee's nest we know a Stelis-wasp 
has been that way. 

As a result of the Stelis' action, the poor Bee-baby 
will starve to death. The Wasp's grubs mature 
first and eat up all the food. 



THE MASON-BEES 



45 




THE BEE HERSELF TURNED BURGLAR 



Sometimes, when a Mason-bee has stayed too long 
among the flowers, getting honey for her cell, she 
finds the cell closed when she returns home. A neigh- 
bor Bee has taken the opportunity to lay her eggs 
there, after finishing the building and stocking it 
with provisions. The real Bee-owner is shut out. 

She does not hesitate long about what to do. After 
she has examined her former home very carefully, to 
make sure it is closed against her, she seems to say 
to herself, "An egg for an egg, a cell for a cell. 
YouVe stolen my house; Fll steal yours." She goes 
to another Bee's dwelling and patiently gnaws the 
mortar lid or door. When she has made an open- 



46 INSECT ADVENTURES 

ing, she stands bending over the cell, her head half- 
buried In It, as If thinking. She goes away, she re- 
turns undecidedly; at last she makes up her mind. 
The other Bees, meanwhile, pay no attention to her, 
not even the one who laid the tgg in the cell. 

The Bee who has turned burglar snaps up the 
strange egg from the surface of the honey and flings 
It on the rubbish-heap as carelessly as If she were rid- 



ding the house of a bit of dirt. Then, although there 
Is already plenty of honey in the cell, she adds more 
from her own stock, lays her own tgg^ and closes up 
the house again. The lid is repaired to look like 
new and everything restored to order. The Bee has 
had her revenge; her anger Is appeased. Next time 
she lays an egg it will be in her own cell, unless that 
has again been seized by another. 



THE MASON-BEES • 47 



SOME USEFUL VISITORS OF THE BEES 

I have told you about the robber Stells-wasp who 
enters the Bee's cement house and steals the pro- 
visions laid up for the Bee-baby; she is not the only 
one who despoils the poor Mason-bee. There Is 
another Bee, the Dioxys, who acts In about the same 
way as the Stelis-wasp, except that she sometimes 
does even worse, and eats up the grub Itself, as well 
as Its honey. Then there are the Osmla-bees and 
the Leaf-cutting Bees, who make themselves very 
much at home In the Bees' houses, when they get a 
chance, keeping out the real owners; and there are 
also three flies, whose grubs eat the Bee-grub alive ! 
It sometimes seems wonderful that the Mason-bee 
should ever live to grow up ; and you will be glad to 
hear of three other visitors the Bee-grub has, which 
actually help Instead of making It Impossible for 
it to live. These are three Beetles. 

The old nests which the Mason-bees build In, to 
save themselves the trouble of making new ones, are 
often In a very Insanitary condition. The cells are 
full of dead larvae (larva Is another word for grub, 
and both words mean the first stage of the insect 
after leaving the egg, when It looks like a little 
worm), which, for some reason or other, could not 
break through their hard prisons; of honey which 
has not been eaten and has turned sour; of tattered 
cocoons, and shreds of skin, left behind when the 
grubs turned Into Bees. All these dead and useless 



48 INSECT ADVENTURES 

things are, of course, not pleasant to have in any 
house, especially in a tidy Bee's. 

Here is where the Beetles come to the rescue. They 
enter the Bee's house and lay their eggs there. The 
larvae, when they come out of the eggs, begin to 
make themselves useful. Two species of larvae gnaw 
the remains of the dead Bees; the third, which Is 
quite a good-looking worm, with a black head and 
the rest of its body a pretty pink, takes care of the 
spoiled honey. This worm turns Into a Beetle in a 
red dress with blue ornaments, whom you may often 
see strolling about the Bee's house in the working 
season, tasting here and there drops of honey oozing 
from some cracked cell. The Bees leave him In 
peace, as If they knew that It was his duty to keep 
their house wholesome. 

Still later, when the Bee's house, exposed as It is 
to wind and weather, cracks and falls to pieces almost 
entirely, the Bees leave it for good and all, and still 
other insects take possession of it. These are gypsies, 
who are not particular where they camp out. Spiders 
make their homes in the blind alleys which used to 
be cells, and weave white-satin screens, behind which 
they lie In wait for passing game. The Hunting- 
wasps arrange nooks with earthen embankments or 
clay partitions, and there store up small members of 
the Spider tribe as food for their families. So we 
see that the house that the Mason-bee built for her- 
self Is useful to many others, good, bad, or indiffer- 
ent friends of hers as the case may be. 



^^ 



p^^Mk 






-^^^^ 




CHAPTER IV 



BEES, CATS AND RED ANTS 



1 WISHED to know something more about my 
Mason-bees. I had heard that they knew how 
to find their nests even if carried away from them. 
One day I managed to capture forty Bees from a 
nest under the eaves of my shed, and to put them 
one by one in screws of paper. I asked my daughter 
Aglae to stay near the nest and watch for the return 
of the Bees. Things being thus arranged, I carried 
off my forty captives to a spot two and a half miles 
from home. 

I had to mark each captive with a mixture of chalk 
and gum arable before I set her free. It was no easy 
business. I was stung many times, and sometimes I 
forgot myself and squeezed the Bee harder than I 
should have. As a result, about twenty out of my 
forty Bees were injured. The rest started off, in dlf- 

49 



so INSECT ADVENTURES 

f erent directions at first ; but most of them seemed to 
me to be making for their home. 

Meanwhile a stiff breeze sprang up, making 
things still harder for the Bees. They must have had 
to fly close to the ground ; they could not possibly go 
up high and get a view of the country. 

Under the circumstances, I hardly thought, when 
I reached home, that the Bees would be there. But 
Aglae greeted me at once, her cheeks flushed with 
excitement: 

"Two !" she cried. "Two arrived at twenty min- 
utes to three, with a load of pollen under their bel- 
lies !" I had released my insects at about two o'clock; 
these first arrivals had therefore flown two miles and 
a half in less than three quarters of an hour, and 
lingered to forage on the way. 

As it was growing late, we had to stop our obser- 
vations. Next day, however, I took another count 
of my Mason-bees and found fifteen with a white 
spot as I had marked them. At least fifteen out of 
the twenty then had returned, in spite of having the 
wind against them, and in spite of having been taken 
to a place where they had almost certainly never been 
before. These Bees do not go far afield, for they 
have all the food and building material they want 
near home. Then how did my exiles return? What 
guided them? It was certainly not memory, but 
some special faculty which we cannot explain, it is 
so different from anything we ourselves possess. 



BEES, CATS AND RED ANTS 



51 



MY CATS 

The Cat is supposed to have the same power as 
the Bee to find its way home. I never believed this 
till I saw what some Cats of my own could do. Let 
me tell you the story. 

One day there appeared upon my garden wall a 
wretched-looking Cat, with matted coat and protrud- 




52 INSECT ADVENTURES 

ing ribs; so thin that his back was a jagged ridge. 
My children, at that time very young, took pity on 
his misery. Bread soaked in milk was offered him 
at the end of a reed. He took it. And the mouth- 
fuls succeeded one another to such good purpose that 
at last he had had enough and went, paying no atten- 
tion to the "Puss! Puss!" of his compassionate 
friends. But after a while he grew hungry again, 
and reappeared on top of the wall. He received the 
same fare of bread soaked in milk, the same soft 
words. He allowed himself to be tempted. He 
came down from the wall. The children were able 
to stroke his back. Goodness, how thin he was! 

It was the great topic of conversation. We dis- 
cussed it at table: we would tame the tramp, we 
would keep him, we would make him a bed of hay. 
It was a most important matter : I can see to this day, 
I shall always see, the council of rattleheads delib- 
erating on the Cat's fate. They were not satisfied 
until the savage animal remained. Soon he grew 
Into a magnificent Tom. His large, round head, his 
muscular legs, his reddish fur, flecked with darker 
patches, reminded one of a little jaguar. He was 
christened Ginger because of his tawny hue. A mate 
Joined him later, picked up in almost similar circum- 
stances. Such was the beginning of my series of 
Gingers, which I have kept for almost twenty years, 
in spite of various movings. 

The first time we moved we were anxious about 
our Cats. We were all of us attached to them and 
should have thought it nothing short of criminal to 



BEES, CATS AND RED ANTS 53 

abandon the poor creatures, whom we had so often 
petted, to distress and probably to thoughtless perse- 
cution. The shes and the kittens would travel with- 
out any trouble : all you have to do Is to put them In 
a basket; they will keep quiet on the journey. But 
the old Tom-cats were a serious problem. I had two, 
the head of the family and one of his descendants, 
quite as strong as himself. We decided to take the 
grandfather. If he consented to come, and to leave 
the grandson behind, after finding him a home. 

My friend Dr. Lorlol offered to take the younger 
cat. The animal was carried to him at nightfall In 
a closed hamper. Hardly were we seated at the 
evening meal, talking of the good fortune of our 
Tom-cat, when we saw a dripping mass jump through 
the window. The shapeless bundle came and rubbed 
Itself against our legs, purring with happiness. It 
was the Cat. 

I heard his story next day. On arriving at Dr. 
Lorlol's, he was locked up In a bedroom. The mo- 
ment he saw himself a prisoner In the unfamiliar 
room, he began to jump about wildly on the furni- 
ture, against the window panes, among the orna- 
ments on the mantelpiece, threatening to make short 
work of everything. Mrs. Lorlol was frightened by 
the little lunatic; she hastened to open the window; 
and the Cat leapt out among the passers-by. A few 
minutes later, he was back at home. And It was no 
easy matter: he had to cross the town almost from 
end to end; he had to make his way through a long 
labyrinth of crowded streets, among a thousand 



54 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




dangers, Including boys and dogs; lastly — and this 
perhaps was even harder — he had to pass over a 
river which ran through the town. There were 
bridges at hand, many, in fact; but the animal, tak- 
ing the shortest cut, had used none of them, bravely 
jumping into the water, as the streaming fur showed. 
I had pity on the poor Cat, so faithful to his home. 
We agreed to take him with us. We were spared 
the worry: a few days later, he was found lying stiff 
and stark under a shrub in the garden. Some one 



BEES, CATS AND RED ANTS 55 

had poisoned him for me. Who? It was not likely 
that It was a friend! 

There was still the old Cat. He could not be 
found when we left our home, so the carter was 
promised an extra two dollars if he would bring the 
Cat to us at our new home with one of his loads. 
On his last journey with our goods he brought him, 
stowed away under the driver's seat. I scarcely knew 
my old Tom when we opened the moving prison in 
which he had been kept since the day before. He 
came out looking a most alarming beast, scratching 
and spitting, with bristling hair, bloodshot eyes, lips 
white with foam. I thought him mad and watched 
him closely for a time. I was wrong: he was merely 
bewildered and frightened. Had there been trouble 
with the carter when he was caught? Did he have a 
bad time on the journey? I do not know. What I 
do know is that the very nature of the Cat seemed 
changed: there was no more friendly purring, no 
more rubbing against our legs; nothing but a wild 
expression and the deepest gloom. Kind treatment 
could not soothe him. One day I found him lying 
dead In the ashes on the hearth. Grief, with the help 
of old age, had killed him. Would he have gone 
back to our old home. If he had had the strength? I 
would not venture to say so. But, at least, I think 
it very remarkable that an animal should let Itself die 
of homesickness because the weakness of old age 
prevented It from returning to Its former haunts. 

The next time we move, the family of Gingers 
have been renewed: the old ones have passed away, 



SS INSECT ADVENTURES 

new ones have come, including a full-grown Tom, 
worthy in every way of his ancestors. He alone will 
give us some trouble in moving; the others, the 
babies and the mothers, can be removed easily. We 
put them Into baskets. The Tom has one to himself, 
so that the peace may be kept. The journey is made 
by carriage. Nothing striking happens before our 
arrival. When we let the mother Cats out of their 
hampers, they inspect the new home, explore the 
rooms one by one ; with their pink noses they recog- 
nize the furniture : they find their own seats, their 
own tables, their own armchairs; but the surround- 
ings are different. They give little surprised miaows 
and questioning glances. We pet them and give them 
saucers of miilk, and by the next day they feel quite 
at home. 

It is a different matter with the Tom. We put 
him in the attic, where he will find plenty of room for 
his capers; we take turns keeping him company; we 
give him a double portion of plates to lick; from time 
to time we bring some of the other Cats to him, to 
show him that he is not alone in the house; we do 
everything we can to make him forget the old home. 
He seems, in fact, to forget it : he is gentle under the 
hand that pets him, he comes when called, purrs, 
arches his back. We have kept him shut up for a 
week, and now we think It is time to give him back 
his liberty. He goes down to the kitchen, stands by 
the table like the others, goes out into the garden, 
under the watchful eye of my daughter Aglae, who 
does not lose sight of him ; he prowls all around with 



BEES, CATS AND RED ANTS 57 

the most innocent air. He comes back. Victory! 
The Tom-cat will not run away. 

Next morning: 

"Puss! Puss!" 

Not a sign of him ! We hunt, we call. Nothing. 
Oh, the hypocrite, the hypocrite ! How he has 
tricked us ! He has gone, he is at our old home. So 
I declare, but the family will not believe it. 

My two daughters went back to the old home. 
They found the Cat, as I said they would, and 
brought him back in a hamper. His paws and belly 
were covered with red clay; and yet the weather was 
dry, there was no mud. The Cat, therefore, must 
have swum the river, and the moist fur had kept the 
red earth of the fields through which he had passed. 
The distance between our two homes was four and 
a half miles. 

We kept the deserter in our attic for two weeks, 
and then we let him out again. Before twenty-four 
hours had passed he was back at his old home. We 
had to leave him to his fate. A neighbor out that 
way told me that he saw him one day hiding behind 
a hedge with a rabbit in his mouth. He was no 
longer provided with food; he had to hunt for it as 
best he could. I heard no more of him. He came 
to a bad end, no doubt; he had become a robber and 
must have met with a robber's fate. 

These true stories prove that Cats have in their 
fashion the instinct of my Mason-bees. So, too, 
have Pigeons, who, transported for hundreds of 
miles, are able to find their way back to their own 



58 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



dove-cot; so have the Swallows and many other 
birds. But to go back to the Insects. I wished to 
find out if Ants, who are insects closely related to 
the Bees, have the same sense of direction that they 
have. 




THE RED ANTS 



Among the treasures of my piece of waste ground 
is an ant-hill belonging to the celebrated Red Ants, 
the slave-hunting Amazons. If you have never heard 
about these Ants, their practices seem almost too 
wonderful to believe. They are unable to bring up 
their own families, to look for their food, to take it 
even when it is within their reach. Therefore they 
need servants to feed them and keep house for them. 
They make a practice of stealing children to wait on 
the community. They raid the neighboring ant-hills, 
the home of a different species; they carry away the 
Ant-babies, who are in the nymph or swaddling- 
clothes stage, that is, wrapped in the cocoons. These 



BEES, CATS AND RED ANTS 59 

grow up In the Red Ants' house and become willing 
and industrious servants. 

When the hot weather of June and July sets In, I 
often see the Amazons leave their barracks of an 
afternoon and start on an expedition. The column 
is five or six yards long. At the first suspicion of an 
ant-hill, the front ones halt and spread out In a 
swarming throng, which is increased by the others as 
they come up hurriedly. Scouts are sent out; the 
Amazons recognize that they are on a wrong track; 
and the column forms again. It resumes Its march, 
crosses the garden paths, disappears from sight in 
the grass, reappears farther on, threads its way 
through the heap of dead leaves, comes out again 
and continues its search. 

At last, a nest of Black Ants Is discovered. The 
Red Ants hasten down to the dormitories, enter the 
burrows where the Ant-grubs lie and soon come out 
with their booty. Then we have, at the gates of the 
underground city, a bewildering scrimmage between 
the defending Blacks and the attacking Reds. The 
struggle Is too unequal to remain in doubt. Victory 
falls to the Reds, who race back home, each with her 
prize, a swaddled baby, dangling from her jaws. 

I should like to go on with the story of the Ama- 
zons, but I have no time at present. Their return to 
the nest Is what I am interested In. Do they know 
their way as the Bees do? 

Apparently not; for I find that the Ants always 
take exactly the same path home that they did com- 
ing, no matter how difficult It was or how many 



6o 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



short cuts might be taken. I came upon them one 
day when they were advancing on a raid by the side 
of a garden pond. The wind was blowing hard and 
blew whole rows of the Ants into the water, where 
the Fish gobbled them up. I thought that on the 
way back they would avoid this dangerous bit. Not 
at all: they came back the same way, and the Fish 
received a double windfall, the Ants and their prizes. 
As I had not time to watch the Ants for whole 
afternoons, I asked my granddaughter Lucie, a little 




rogue who likes to hear my stories of the Ants, to 
help me. She had been present at the great battle 
between the Reds and the Blacks and was much im- 
pressed by the stealing of the long-clothes babies, 
and she was willing to wander about the garden when 
the weather was fine, keeping an eye on the Red Ants 
for me. 

One day, while I was working in my study, there 
came a banging at my door. 

*'It's I, Lucie! Come quick: the Reds have gone 
into the Blacks' house. Come quick!" 



BEES, CATS AND RED ANTS 6i 

"And do you know the road they took?" 

*Tes, I marked it." 

*'What! Marked It? And how?" 

"I did what Hop-o'-My-Thumb did: I scattered 
little white stones along the road." 

I hurried out. Things had happened as my six- 
year-old helper had said. The Ants had made their 
raid and were returning along the track of tell- 
tale pebbles. When I took some of them up on a 
leaf and set them a few feet away from the path, they 
were lost. The Ant relies on her sight and her mem- 
ory for places to guide her home. Even when her 
raids to the same ant-hill are two or three days 
apart, she follows exactly the same path each time. 
The memory of an Ant! What can that be? Is It 
like ours? I do not know; but I do know that, 
though closely related to the Bee, she has not the 
same sense of direction that the Bee possesses. 








CHAPTER V 



THE MINING BEES 



THESE Bees are generally longer and slighter 
than the Bee of our hives. They are of dif- 
ferent sizes, some larger than the Common Wasp, 
others even smaller than the House-fly, but all have 
a mark that shov/s the family. This is a smooth and 
shiny line, at the back of the tip-end of the abdomen, 
a groove along which the sting slides up and down 
when the insect is on the defensive. The particular 
species I am going to tell you about Is called the 
Zebra Bee, because the female is beautifully belted 
around her long abdomen with alternate black and 
pale-russet scarfs; a simple and pretty dress. She 
is about the size of the Common Wasp. 

She builds her galleries In firm soil, where there Is 
no danger of landsHdes. The well-leveled paths In 
my garden suit her to perfection. Every spring she 



THE MINING BEES 63 

takes possession of them, never alone, but in gangs 
whose number varies greatly, amounting sometimes 
to as many as a hundred. In this way she founds 
what may be described as small townships. 

Each Bee has her home, a house which no one but 
the owner has the right to enter. A good beating 
would soon call to order any adventuress Bee who 
dared to make her way into another's dwelling. Let 
each keep to her own place and perfect peace will 
reign in this new-formed society. 

Operations begin in April, very quietly, the only 
sign of the undei-ground works being the little 
mounds of fresh earth. The laborers show them- 
selves very seldom, so busy are they at the bottom of 
their pits. At moments, here and there, the summit 
of a tiny mole-hill begins to totter and tumbles down 
the slopes of the cone : it is a worker coming up with 
her armful of rubbish and shooting it outside, with- 
out showing herself in the open. 

May arrives, gay with flowers and sunshine. The 
diggers of April have turned themselves into har- 
vesters. At every moment I see them settling, all 
befloured with yellow, on top of the mole-hills now 
turned Into craters. 

The Bee's home underneath consists first of a 
nearly vertical shaft, which goes down Into the 
ground from eight to twelve inches. This is the en- 
trance hall. It is about as thick around as a thick 
lead-pencil. 

At the foot of this shaft, in what we might call 
the basement of the house, are the cells. They are 



64 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




i^^. 








oval hollows, three quarters of an inch long, dug out 
of the clay. They end in a short bottle-neck that 
widens into a graceful mouth. All of them open into 
the passage. 

The Inside of these little cells Is beautifully pol- 
ished. It is marked with faint, diamond-shaped 
marks, the traces of the polishing tool that has given 
the last finish to the work. What can this polisher 
be? None other than the tongue. The Bee has 
made a trowel of her tongue and licked the wall 
daintily and carefully in order to polish it. 

I fill a cell with water. The liquid remains In It 
quite well, without a trace of soaking through. The 
Bee has varnished the clay of her cell with the saliva 



THE MINING BEES 6s 

applied by her tongue. No wet or damp can reach 
the Bee-baby, even when the ground Is soaked with 
rain. 

The Bee-grub's rooms are made ready long be- 
forehand, during the bad weather at the end of 
March and in April, when there are few flowers. The 
mother works alone at the bottom of her shaft, using 
her jaws to spade the earth, and her feet, armed with 
tiny claws, for rakes. She collects the dirt and then, 
moving backwards with her fore-legs closed over the 
load, she lifts it up through the shaft and flings It 
outside, upon the mole-hill, as we have seen. Then 
she puts the finishing touches with her tongue, and 
when May comes, with its radiant sunshine and 
wealth of flowers, everything is ready. 

The fields are gay now with dandelions, rock- 
roses, tansies, daisies, and other flowers, among 
which the harvesting Bee rolls gleefully, covering 
herself with pollen. With her crop full of honey and 
the brushes of her legs all floury with pollen, the 
Bee returns to her village. Flying very low, almost 
level with the ground, she hesitates, with sudden 
turns and bewildered movements. It appears as If 
she were having trouble to find her own burrow 
among so many which look exactly alike. But no, 
there are certain signs known to the insect alone. 
After carefully examining the neighborhood, the Bee 
finds her home, alights on the threshold, and dives 
Into It quickly. 

What happens at the bottom of the pit must be 
the same thing that happens in the case of the other 



66 INSECT ADVENTURES 

Wild Bees. The harvester enters a cell backwards; 
she first brushes herself and drops her load of pol- 
len; then, turning round, she empties the honey in 
her crop upon the floury mass. This done, the un- 
wearied one leaves the burrovv^ and flies away, back 
to the flowers. After many journeys, she has col- 
lected enough provisions in the cell. Now is the time 
to make them up into food, or bake the cake, as we 
might say. 

The mother Bee kneads her flour, mixing with it 
a little honey. She makes the dough into a round 
loaf, the size of a pea. Unlike our own loaves, this 
one has the crust inside and the soft part outside. 
The middle of the loaf, the food which will be eaten 
last, when the grub has gained strength, consists of 
almost nothing but dry pollen. The Bee keeps the 
softest, nicest part for the outside, from which the 
feeble grub is to take its first mouthfuls. Here it is 
all soft crumb, a delicious sandwich with plenty of 
honey. 

She now lays an tgg^ bent like a bow, upon the 
round mass of food. If she were like most Honey- 
bees, she would close the house now. But the Zebra 
Wild Bee is different. She leaves the cells opening 
into the burrow, so that she can look into them daily 
and see how her family is getting on. I imagine that 
from time to time she gives more food to the grub, 
for the original loaf appears to me a very small 
amount compared with that served by the other 
Bees. 

At last the grubs, close-watched and well-fed, have 



THE MINING BEES 67 

grown fat; they are ready for the second stage of 
Bee Hfe. They are about to weave their wrappers, 
or cocoons, and change into chrysales. Then, and 
not till then, the cells are closed; a big clay stopper 
is built by the mother into the spreading mouth of 
the cells. Henceforth her cares are over. The rest 
will come of itself. 

If all goes well, the Zebra Bee's spring family 
grows up in a couple of months or so ; they leave the 
cells about the end of June, flying off to seek refresh- 
ment on the flowers as their mother has done before 
them. 



THE GNAT AND THE GIANTESS 

Sometimes all does not go well with the Bee's 
family. There are brigands about. One of them is 
an insignificant Gnat, who is, nevertheless, a bold 
robber of the Bee. 

What does the Gnat look like ? She is a Fly, less 
than one fifth of an inch long. Eyes, dark-red; face, 
white. Corselet, pearl-gray, with five rows of fine 
black dots, which are the roots of stiff bristles point- 
ing backwards. Grayish abdomen. Black legs. That 
is her picture. 



68 INSECT ADVENTURES 

There are many of these Gnats in the colony of 
Bees I am watching. Crouching in the sun, near a 
burrow, the Gnat waits. As soon as the Bee arrives 
from her harvesting, her legs yellow with pollen, the 
Gnat darts forth and pursues her, keeping behind 
in all the turns of her wavering flight. At last, the 
Bee suddenly dives indoors. No less suddenly the 
Gnat settles on the mole-hill, quite close to the en- 
trance. Motionless, with her head turned towards 
the door of the house, she waits for the Bee to finish 
her business. The latter reappears at last and, for a 
few seconds, stands on the threshold, with her head 
and neck outside the hole. The Gnat, on her side, 
does not stir. 

Often they are face to face, separated by a space 
no wider than a finger's breadth. Neither of them 
shows the least excitement. The Bee, this amiable 
giantess, could, if she liked, rip up with her claw the 
tiny bandit who ruins her home ; she could crunch her 
with her jaws, run her through with her sting. She 
does nothing of the sort, but leaves the robber in 
peace. The latter does not seem in the least afraid. 
She remains quite motionless in the presence of the 
Bee who could crush her with one blow. 

The Bee flies off. At once the Gnat walks in, with 
no more ceremony than if she were entering her own 
place. She now chooses among the victualed cells, 
for they are all open, as I have said; she leisurely 
places her eggs In one of them. No one will disturb 
her until the Bee's return, and by that time she has 
made off. In some favorable spot, not far from the 



THE MINING BEES 69 

burrow, she waits for a chance to do the same thing 
over again. 

Some weeks after, let us dig up the pollen loaves 
of the Bee. We shall find them crumbled up, frit- 
tered away. We shall see two or three little worms, 
with pointed mouths, moving in the yellow flour scat- 
tered over the floor of the cell. These are the Gnat's 
children. With them we sometimes find the lawful 
owner, the grub-worm of the Bee, but stunted and 
thin with fasting. His greedy companions, without 
otherwise hurting him, deprive him of the best of 
everything. The poor creature dwindles, shrivels up 
and soon disappears from view. The Gnat-worms 
make of his corpse one mouthful the more. 

The Bee mother, though she is free to visit her 
grubs at any moment, does not appear to notice what 
is going on. She never kills the strange grubs, or 
even turns them out of doors. She seals up the cells 
in which the Gnat children have feasted just as care- 
fully as if her own grubs were in it. By this time the 
Gnat grubs have left. The cells are quite empty. 

THE DOORKEEPERS 

The Zebra Bee's spring family, when no accident 
such as we have been describing has happened, con- 
sists of about ten young Bees, all sisters. They save 
time by using the mother's house, all of them to- 
gether, without dispute. They come and go peace- 
fully through the same door, attend to their busi- 
ness, pass and let the others pass. Down at the hot- 



70 INSECT ADVENTURES 

torn of the pit, each Bee has her little home, a group 
of cells which she has dug for herself. Here she 
works alone ; but the passage way is free to all the 
sisters. 

Let us watch them as they go to and fro. A har- 
vester comes back from the fields, the feather- 
brushes of her legs powdered with pollen. If the 
door be open, the Bee at once dives underground. 
She IS very busy, and she does not waste time on the 
threshold. Sometimes several appear upon the scene 
at almost the same moment. The passage is too 
narrow for two, especially when they have to avoid 
jostling each other and so making the floury burden 
fall to the floor. The one nearest to the opening 
enters quickly. The others, drawn up on the thresh- 
old in the order of their arrival, respectful of one 
another's rights, await their turn. As soon as the 
first disappears, the second follows after her, and is 
herself swiftly followed by the third and then the 
others, one by one. 

Sometimes a Bee about to come out meets a Bee 
about to go in. Then the latter draws back a little 
and makes way for the other. Each Bee tries to 
outdo the other in politeness. I see some who, when 
on the point of coming out from the pit, go down 
again and leave the passage free for the one who has 
just arrived. Thanks to this accommodating spirit 
on the part of all, the business of the house goes on 
without delay. 

Let us keep our eyes open. There is something 
even better than this to see. When a Bee appears. 



THE MINING BEES 71 

returning from her round of the flowers, we see a 
sort cf trap door, which closes the house, suddenly 
fall and give a free passage. As soon as the new 
arrival has entered, the trap rises back into its place, 
almost level with the ground, and closes the entrance 
again. The same thing happens when the insects go 
out. At a request from within, the trap descends, 
the door opens and the Bee flies away. The opening 
Is closed at once. 

What can this thing be, which works like the pis- 
ton of a pump, and opens and closes the door at each 
departure and each arrival? It is a Bee, who has 
become the doorkeeper of the establishment. With 
her large head she stops up the top of the entrance 
hall. If any one belonging to the house wants to go 
in or out, she "pulls the cord," that is to say, she 
withdraws to a spot where the gallery becomes wider 
and leaves room for two. When the other has 
passed she returns to the opening and blocks It with 
the top of her head. Motionless, ever on the look- 
out, she does not leave her post except to drive away 
persistent visitors. 

When she does come outside, let us take a look at 
her. We recognize in her a Bee similar to the others 
except that the top of her head Is bald and her dress 
Is dingy and threadbare. All the nap Is gone; and 
one can hardly make out the handsome stripes of red 
and brown which she used to have. These tattered, 
work-worn garments make things clear to us. 

This Bee who mounts guard and does the work of 
a doorkeeper is older than the others. She is In 



72 INSECT ADVENTURES 

fact the foundress of the establishment, the mother 
of the actual workers, the grandmother of the pres- 
ent grubs. When she was young, three months ago, 
she wore herself out making her nest all by herself. 
Now she is taking a well-earned rest, but hardly a 
rest, for she is helping the household to the best of 
her power. 

You remember the suspicious Kid, in La Fontaine's 
fable, who, looking through the chink of the door, 
said to the Wolf: 

''Show me a white foot, or I shan't open the door." 

The grandmother Bee Is no less suspicious. She 
says to each comer: 

"Show me the yellow foot of a Wild Honey-bee, 
or you won't be let in." 

None is admitted to the dwelling unless she be 
recognized as a member of the family. 

See for yourselves. Near the burrow passes an 
Ant, an unscrupulous adventuress, who would not be 
sorry to know the meaning of the honeyed fragrance 
that rises from the bottom of the cellar. 

"Be off, or you'll catch it!" says the doorkeeping 
Bee, with a movement of her neck. 

Usually the threat is enough. The Ant leaves at 
once. Should she insist, the grandmother leaves 
her sentry-box, flings herself upon the saucy Ant, 
beats her, and drives her away. The moment she 
has given her punishment, she returns to her post. 

Next comes the turn of the Leaf-cutting Bee, who, 
unskilled in the art of burrowing, uses the old gal- 
leries dug by others. Those of the Zebra Bee suit 




'Be off, or you'll catch it!' says the doorkeeping 



BEE/ 



74 INSECT ADVENTURES 

her very well, when the terrible Gnat has left them 
vacant for lack of heirs. Seeking for a home where- 
in to stack her Robinia-leaf honey-pots^ she often 
makes a flying visit to my colonies of Wild Bees. A 
burrow seems to take her fancy; but, before she 
sets foot on earth, her buzzing is noticed by the 
sentry, who suddenly darts out and makes a few 
gestures on the threshold of her door. That is all. 
The Leaf-cutter has understood. She moves on. 

Sometimes the Leaf-cutting Bee has time to 
alight and stick her head into the mouth of the pit. 
In a moment the grandmother Is there, comes a 
little higher, and bars the way. Follows a not very 
serious contest. The stranger quickly recognizes 
the rights of the first occupant and, without insisting, 
goes to seek a home elsewhere. 

A clever burglar, the parasite of the Leaf-cutting 
Bee, receives a sound whipping under my eyes. She 
thought, the featherbrain, that she was entering the 
Leaf-cutter's house ! She soon finds out her mis- 
take; she meets the grandmother Bee, who punishes 
her severely. She makes off at full speed. And so 
with the others who, through carelessness or ambi- 
tion, try to enter the burrow. 

Sometimes the doorkeeping Bee has an encoun- 
ter with another grandmother. About the middle 
of July, when the Bee colony is at its busiest, there 
appear to be two distinct sets of Bees : the young 
mothers and the old. The young ones, much more 
numerous, brisk in movement and smartly arrayed, 
come and go unceasingly from the burrows to the 



THE MINING BEES 75 

fields and from the fields to the burrows. The older 
ones, faded and dispirited, wander Idly from hole 
to hole. They look as though they had lost their 
way and could not find their homes. Who are these 
vagabonds? I see in them afflicted ones who have 
lost a family through the act of the hateful Gnat. At 
the awakening of summer, the poor mother Bee 
found herself alone. She left her empty house and 
went off In search of a dwelling where there were 
cradles to defend, a guard to keep. But those for- 
tunate nests already have their overseer, the grand- 
mother, who Is jealous and gives her unemployed 
neighbor a cold reception. One sentry is enough; 
two would merely block the narrow passage. 

Sometimes the grandmothers actually fight. 
When the tramp looking for employment appears 
outside the door, the one on guard does not move 
from her post, does not withdraw into the passage, 
as she would before a young Bee returning from the 
fields. Instead of that, she threatens the intruder 
with her feet and jaws. The other retaliates and 
tries to force her way in notwithstanding. They 
come to blows. The fight ends by the defeat of 
the stranger, who goes off to pick a quarrel else- 
where. 

What becomes of the poor grandmothers who 
have no homes? They grow rarer and more lan- 
guid from day to day; then they disappear for good. 
The little Gray Lizard had his eye on them, they 
are easily snapped up. 

As for the one on guard, she seems never to 



76 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




rest. In the cool hours of the early morning, she 
is at her post. She is there also towards noon, when 
the harvesting is in full swing and there are many 
Bees going in and out. In the afternoon, when the 
heat is great and the working Bees do not go to 
the fields, but stay indoors instead, preparmg the 
new cells, the grandmother is still upstairs, stopping 
the door with her bald head. She takes no nap dur- 
ing the stifling hours : the safety of the household 
requires her to forego it. At nightfall, or even 
later, she is just as busy as in the day. The others 
are resting, but not she, for fear, apparently, of 
night dangers known to herself alone. 

Guarded in this manner, the burrow is safe from 



THE MINING BEES 77 

such a misfortune as overtook It In May. Let the 
Gnat come now, If she dare, to steal the Bee's loaves ! 
She will be put to flight at once. She will not come, 
because, until spring returns, she Is underground In 
the pupa state, that Is, wrapped up In her cocoon. 
But In her absence there Is no lack, among the Fly- 
rabble, of other parasites. And yet, for all my daily 
visits, I never catch one of these In the neighbor- 
hood of the summer burrows. How well the rascals 
know their trade ! How well aware are they of the 
guard who keeps watch at the Bees' door ! 






CHAPTER VI 



THE LEAF-CUTTING BEE 



IF you know how to use your eyes in your garden 
you may observe, some day or other, a number of 
curious holes in the leaves of the lilac- and rose- 
trees, some of them round, some of them oval, as 
if idle but skillful hands had been at work with the 
pinking-iron. In some places there is scarcely any- 
thing but the veins of the leaves left. The author 
of the mischief is a gray-clad Bee. For scissors, 
she has her jaws; for compasses, she has her eye 
and the pivot of her body. The pieces cut out 
are made into thimble-shaped bags, meant to con- 
tain the honey and the egg: the larger, oval pieces 
make the floor and sides; the smaller, round pieces 
are kept for the lid. The Leaf-cutter's nest con- 
sists of a row of a dozen, more or less, of these 
thimbles, placed one on top of the other. 

One species of the Leaf-cutting Bee whom we will 
notice is called the White-girdled Leaf-cutter. She 

78 



THE LEAF-CUTTING BEE 79 

usually takes for her dwelling the tunnel of some 
Earthworm opening off a claybank. The tunnel 
Is too deep for her purpose. At the bottom of It 
the climate Is too damp, and besides, when the Bee- 
grub Is hatched, It would be dangerous for It to have 
to climb so far through all sorts of rubbish to reach 
the surface. The Leaf-cutter, therefore, uses only 
the front part of the Worm's gallery, seven or eight, 
inches at the most. What is to be done with the 
rest of the tunnel? It would never do to leave It 
open, because some underground burglar, a worm 
or other Insect, might come that way and attack the 
cells at the rear. 

The little Bee foresees this danger. She sets to 
work to block the passage with a strong barricade 
of fragments of leaves, some dozens of pieces rolled 
into screws and fitting into each other. You can see 
that the insect has cut out these pieces carelessly and 
hurriedly, and on a different pattern from that of 
the pieces which are to make the nest. 

Next after the barricade of leaves comes the row 
of cells, usually about five or six in number. These 
are made of round and oval pieces, as we have seen; 
oval for the sides, round for the lid. There are two 
sizes of ovals, the larger ones for the outside and 
bottom of the bag; the smaller ones for the inside, 
to make the walls thicker and fill up the gaps. 

The Leaf-cutter therefore Is able to use her scis- 
sors according to the task before her; she makes 
large or small pieces as they are needed. She is 
especially careful about the bottom of the bag. As 



8o 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



the natural curve of the larger pieces is not enough 
to make a cup without cracks in it, the Bee improves 
the work with two or three small ovals applied to 
the holes. 

The cover of the pot consists solely of round 
pieces, and these are cut so exactly by the careful Bee 
that the edges of the cover rest upon the brim of 
fhe honey-bag. No one could do better with the 
help of compasses. 




When the row of cells is finished, the entrance to 
the gallery must be blocked up with a safety stopper. 
The Bee then returns to the free and easy use of 
her scissor-jaws which we noticed at the beginning 
when she was fencing off the back part of the Earth- 
worm's too-deep burrow; she cuts out of the foliage 
irregular pieces of different shapes and sizes; and 
with all these pieces, very few of which fit at all 



THE LEAF-CUTTING BEE 8i 

closely the opening to be blocked, she succeeds in 
making a door which cannot be forced open, thanks 
to the huge number of layers. 

Let us leave the Leaf-cutter to finish laying her 
eggs, and consider for a moment her skill as a cutter. 
What model does she use, when cutting her neat 
ovals out of the delicate Robinia-leaves, which she 
uses for her cells? What pattern that she carries 
in her mind guides her scissors? What system of 
measurement tells her the correct size? One would 
like to picture the insect as a living pair of com- 
passes, able to trace curves by swaying her body, 
even as our arm traces a circle by swinging from the 
shoulder. This explanation might do if she made 
only one size of oval; but she makes two, large 
and small. A pair of compasses which changes its 
radius of its own accord and alters the curve accord- 
ing to the plan before it appears to me an instru- 
ment somewhat difficult to believe in. Besides, the 
Bee cuts out round pieces also. These rounds, for 
the most part, fit the mouth of her jar almost exactly. 
When the cell is finished, the Bee flies hundreds of 
yards away to make the lid. She arrives at the 
leaf from which the round pieces are to be cut. 
What picture, what recollection has she of the pot to 
be covered? Why, none at all; she has never seen 
it; she does her work underground, in utter dark- 
ness! At the utmost, she can only remember how 
it felt. 

And yet the circular piece to be cut out must be 
of a certain size: if it were too large, it would not 



82 INSECT ADVENTURES 

go In; if too small, it would close badly, it would 
slip down on the honey and suffocate the egg. The 
Bee does not hesitate a moment. She cuts out her 
circle as quickly as she would cut out any shapeless 
piece ; and that circle, without further measurement, 
is of the right size to fit the pot. Who can explain 
this geometry? 

One winter evening, as we were sitting round the 
fire, whose cheerful blaze unloosed our tongues, I 
put the problem of the Leaf-cutter to my family: 

"Among your kitchen utensils," I said, "you have 
a pot in daily use; but it has lost its lid, which was 
knocked over and broken by the cat playing on the 
shelves. To-morrow is market-day and one of you 
will be going to Orange to buy the week's provisions. 
Would she undertake, without a measure of any 
kind, with the sole aid of memory, which We would 
allow her to refresh by a careful examination of the 
object before starting, to bring back exactly what 
the pot wants, a lid neither too large nor too small, 
in short, the same size as the top?" 

It was admitted with one accord that nobody 
would accept such a commission without taking a 
measure with her, or at least a bit of string giving 
the width. Our memory for sizes is not accurate 
enough. She would come back from the town with 
something that "might do"; and it would be the 
merest chance if this turned out to be the right size. 

Well, the Leaf-cutting Bee is even less well off 
than ourselves. She has no mental picture of her 
pot, because she has never seen it; she is not able to 



,11 iiLiui iinawfinri 




"What pattern that she carries in her mind guides 

HER scissors?" 



84 INSECT ADVENTURES 

pick and choose In the crockery dealer's heap, which 
acts as something of a guide to our memory by com- 
parison; she must, without hesitation, far away from 
her home, cut out a disk that fits the top of her jar. 
What is impossible to us is child's play to her. 
Where we could not do without a measure of some 
kind, a bit of string, a pattern or a scrap of paper 
with figures upon It, the little Bee needs nothing at 
all. In housekeeping matters she Is cleverer than 
we are. 

The insect excels us In practical geometry. I look 
upon the Leaf-cutter's pot and lid as an addition 
to the many other marvels of instinct that cannot be 
explained by mechanics; I submit It to the consid- 
eration of science; and I pass on. 




CHAPTER VII 



THE COTTON-BEES AND RESIN-BEES 



THERE are many Bees who, like the Leaf- 
cutters, do not make their own dwellings, 
but use shelters made by the work of others. Many 
of the Osmia-bees seize the old homes of the Ma- 
sons; other honey-gatherers use earthworm gal- 
leries, snail-shells, dry brambles which have been 
made into hollow tubes by the mining Bees, and even 
the homes of the Digger Wasps burrowed in 
the sand. Among these borrowers are the Cot- 
ton-bees, who fill the reeds with cottony satchels, 
and the Resin-bees, who plug up snail-shells with 
gum and resin. 

There is a reason for such arrangement. The 
Bees who work hard to make their homes, such as 
the Mason-bee, who scrapes hard clay and makes a 
large cement mansion, the Carpenter-bee, who bores 
dead wood to a depth of nine inches, and the Antho- 

85 



86 INSECT ADVENTURES 

phora, who digs corridors and cells in the banks 
hardened by the sun, have no time left to spend In 
furnishing their cells elaborately. On the other 
hand, the Bees who take possession of ready-made 
homes, are artists in Interior decorations. There Is 
the Leaf-cutting Bee, who makes her leafy baskets 
with such skill ; the Upholsterer-bee, who hangs her 
cells with poppy-petals, and the Cotton-bee, who 
makes the most beautiful purses of cotton. 

We have only to look at the Cotton-bee's nests, 
to realize that the Insect who makes these could not 
be a digger, too. When newly-felted, and not yet 
sticky with honey, the wadded purse Is very elegant, 
of a dazzling white. No bird's-nest can compare 
with It In fineness of material or in gracefulness of 
form. How, with the httle bales of cotton brought 
up one by one in her mouth, can the Bee manage to 
mat all together into one material and then to work 
this Into a thimble-shaped wallet? She has no other 
tools to work with than those owned by the Mason- 
bees and the Leaf-cutting Bees; namely, her jaws 
and her feet. Yet what very different results are 
obtained! 

It Is hard to see the Cotton-bees In action, since 
they work Inside the reeds when making the nests. 
However, I will describe the little that I saw. The 
Bee procures her cotton from many different kinds 
of plants, such as thistles, mulleins, the woolly sage 
and everlastings. She uses only the plants that are 
dead and dry, however, never fresh ones In 
this way she avoids mildew, which would make Its 



COTTON-BEES AND RESIN-BEES 87 







appearance In her nests in the mass of hairs still 
filled with sap. 

She alights on the plant she wishes to use, scrapes 
It with her mouth, and then passes the tiny flake to 
her hind-legs, which hold it pressed against the chest, 
mixes with it still more down, and makes the whole 
into a little ball. When this is the size of a pea. It 
goes back to the mouth, and the insect flies off, with 
her bale of cotton in her mouth. If we have the pa- 
tience to wait, we shall see her coming back again and 
again to the same plant, until her bags are all made. 

The Cotton-bee uses different grades of cotton for 
the different parts of her work. She Is like the bird, 
who furnishes the inside of her nest with wool to 



88 INSECT ADVENTURES 

make it soft for the little birds, and strengthens the 
outside with sticks. The Bee makes her cells, the 
grubs' nurseries, of the very finest down, the cotton 
gathered from a thistle; she makes the barrier plug 
at the entrance of stiff, prickly hairs, such as the 
coarse bristles scraped from a mullein-leaf. 

I do not see her making the cells Inside the bram- 
ble, but I catch her preparing the plug for the top. 
With her fore-legs she tears the cotton apart and 
spreads It out; with her jaws she loosens the hard 
lumps; with her forehead she presses each new layer 
of the plug upon the one below. This Is a rough 
task; but probably her general way of working Is 
the same for the finer cells. 

Some Cotton-bees after making the plug go even 
further and fill up the empty space at the end of the 
bramble with any kind of rubbish that they can 
find: little pieces of gravel, bits of earth, grains of 
sawdust, mortar, cypress-catkins, or broken leaves. 
The pile is a real barricade, and will keep any foe 
from breaking In. 

The honey with which the Cotton-bee whose nest 
I examined filled the cells was pale-yellow, all of 
the same kind and only partly liquefied, so that It 
would not trickle through the cotton bag. On this 
honey the egg Is laid. After a while the grub Is 
hatched and finds Its food all ready. It plunges Its 
head In the honey, drinks long draughts, and grows 
fat. We will leave It there, knowing that after a 
while it will build a cocoon and turn into a Cotton- 
bee. 



COTTON-BEES AND RESIN-BEES 89 

Another Interesting Bee who uses a ready-made 
hom-e Is the Resln-bee. In the stone-heaps which 
have been left from the quarries, we often find the 
Field-mouse sitting on a grass mattress, nibbling 
acorns, almonds, olive-stones, apricot-stones, and 














90 INSECT ADVENTURES 

snail-shells. When he Is gone, he has left behind 
him, under the overhanging stones, a heap of empty 
shells. Among these, there Is always a hope of find- 
ing a few plugged up with resin, the nests of this 
sort of Bee. The Osmia-bees also use snail-shells, 
but they plug them up with clay. 

It Is hard to tell the Resin-bees' nests, because the 
Insect often makes its home at the very Inside of the 
spiral, a long way from the mouth. I hold up a 
shell to the light. If it Is quite transparent, I know 
that It Is empty and I put it back to be used for fu- 
ture nests. If the second whorl Is opaque, does not 
let the light through, the spiral contains something. 
What? Earth washed in by the rain? Remnants 
of the dead Snail? That remains to be seen. With 
a little pocket-trowel I make a wide window In the 
middle of the final whorl. If I see a gleaming resin 
floor, with Incrustations of gravel, the thing Is 
settled: I have a Resin-bee's nest. 

The Bee picks out the particular whorl of the 




shell which Is the right size for her nest. In large 
shells, the nest Is near the back; In smaller shells, at 
the very front, where the passage Is widest. She 



COTTON-BEES AND RESIN-BEES 91 

always makes a partition of a mosaic formed of bits 
of gravel set in gum. I did not know at first what 
this gum was. It is amber-colored, semi-transparent, 
brittle, soluble in spirits of wine, and burns 
with a sooty flame and a strong smell of resin. These 
characteristics told me that the Bee uses the 
resinous drops that ooze from the trunks of various 
cone-bearing trees. There are plenty of junipers 
in the neighborhood, and I think that these form 
the main part of this Bee's materials. If there 
were pines, cypresses, and other cone-bearing trees 
near, she would probably use those. 

After the lid of resin and gravel, the Bee stops 
up the shell still further with bits of gravel, catkins 
and needles of the juniper, and other odds 
and ends, including a few rare little land-shells. 
This IS the secondary barrier, to make the shell still 
safer for her nest. The Cotton-bee uses the 
same sort of barrier in the bramble. The Resin- 
bee uses it only In the larger shells, where there is 
much vacant space; in the smaller ones, where her 
nest reaches nearly to the entrance, she does without 
it. 

The cells come next, farther back in the spiral. 
There are usually only two. The front room, which 
is the larger, contains a male, which in this kind of 
Bee is larger than the female; the smaller back 
room houses a female. It is extraordinary how the 
mother Bee knows the sex of the egg she is laying. 
This matter has never been explained to the satis- 
faction of scientists. 



92 INSECT ADVENTURES 

The Resin-bee makes a mistake in choosing large 
shells and not filling them up to the very entrance. 
The Osmia-bee also makes her nest in snail-shells; 
she often seizes upon the empty rooms in the Resin- 
bee's house and fills them with her mass of cells. 
She then stops up the entrance with a thick clay 
stopper. When July comes, this house with the two 
families of tenants becomes the scene of a tragic con- 
flict. The Resin-bees, in the back rooms, on 
attaining the adult state, burst their swaddling bands, 
bore their way through the resin partitions, pass 
through the gravel barricade and try to release them- 
selves. Alas, the strange family ahead blocks 
the way! The Osmia inmates are still in the grub 
stage; they mean to stay in their cells till the next 
spring. The Resin-bees cannot get out through this 
second row of clay-stoppered cells; they give up all 
hope and perish behind the wall of earth. If their 
mother had only foreseen this danger, the disaster 
would never have happened; but instinct has failed 
her for once. Misfortune has not taught the Resin- 
bees anything through all the generations; and this 
contradicts the theory of those scientists who say 
that animals learn through experience. 




CHAPTER VIII 



THE HAIRY SAND-WASPS 



A SLENDER waist, a slim shape; an abdomen 
tapering very much at the upper part and 
fastened to the body as though by a thread; black 
raiment with a red sash across the belly: there you 
have a short description of the burrowing Sand- 
Wasps, who hunt Caterpillars. 

The Sand- Wasps choose for their burrows a light 
soil, easily tunneled. In which the sand Is held to- 
gether with a little clay and lime. Edges of paths, 
sunny banks where the grass Is rather bare — these 
are the favorite spots. In spring, quite early In 
April, we see the Hairy Sand-Wasp there. 

Its burrow Is a straight up-and-down hole, like a 
well, about as thick as a goose-quUl and about two 
inches deep. At the bottom Is a solitary cell, to 
hold the egg. The Sand-Wasp digs by herself, 

93 



94 INSECT ADVENTURES 

quietly, without hurrying, without any joyous en- 
thusiasm. As usual, the front feet serve as rakes 
and the jaws do duty as mining-tools. When some 
grain of sand is very hard to remove, you hear ris- 
ing from the well a sort of shrill grating sound made 
by the quivering of the insect's wings and of her 
whole body. Every little while the Wasp appears 
in the open with a load of dirt in her teeth, some 
bit of gravel which she usually flies away with and 
drops at a distance of a few inches, so as not to 
litter the place. 

Some of these grains the Sand-Wasp does not 
treat as she does the rest. Instead of flying off and 
dropping them far from the work yard, she removes 
them on foot and lays them near her burrow. She 
has a special use for them. When her home is dug, 
she looks at this little heap of stones to see If there 
is any there to suit her. If there is not, she explores 
the neighborhood until she finds what she wants, a 
small flat stone a little larger in diameter than the 
mouth of her hole. She carries off this slab In her 
jaws and lays it, as a temporary door, over the open- 
ing of the burrow. To-morrow, when she comes 
back from hunting, the Wasp will know how to find 
her home, made safe by this heavy door; she will 
bring back a paralyzed caterpillar, grasped by the 
skin of Its neck and dragged between her legs; she 
will lift the slab, which looks exactly like the other 
little stones around, and which she alone is able to 
Identify; she will let down the game to the bottom 
of her well, lay her egg and close the house for good 



THE HAIRY SAND-WASPS 



95 



by sweeping Into the hole all the rubbish, which she 
has kept near by. 

The Hairy Sand-Wasp hunts a particular sort of 
prey, a kind of large Caterpillar called the Gray 
Worm, which spends most of Its time underground. 
How does she then get hold of It? We shall see. 
One day I was returning from a walk when I saw a 
Hairy Sand- Wasp very busy at the foot of a tuft 
of thyme. I at once lay down on the ground, close 
to where she was working. My presence did not 
frighten the Wasp ; in fact, she came and settled on 
my sleeve for a moment, decided that her visitor 
was harmless, since he did not move, and returned 
to her tuft of thyme. As an old stager, I knew what 








96 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



this tameness meant: the Wasp was too busy to 
bother about me. 

The insect scratched the ground at the foot of the 
plant, where the root joined the stem, pulled up slen- 
der grass rootlets and poked her head under the 
little clods which she had lifted. She ran hurriedly 
this way and that around the thyme, looking at every 
crevice. She was not digging herself a burrow but 
hunting the game hidden underground; she was like 
a Dog trying to dig a Rabbit out of his hole. 

Presently, excited by what was happening over- 
head, a big Gray Worm made up his mind to leave 
his lair and come up to the light of day. That set- 










THE HAIRY SAND-WASPS 97 

tied him : the Wasp was on the spot at once, gripping 
him by the skin of his neck and holding tight in spite 
of his contortions. Perched on the monster's back, 
the Wasp bent her abdomen and deliberately, with- 
out hurrying, like a clever surgeon, drove her lancet- 
sting into the back surface of each of the victim's 
rings or segments, from the first to the last. Not 
a ring was left without receiving a stab ; all, whether 
with legs or without, Were dealt with in order, from 
front to back. 

The Wasp's skill would make science turn green 
with envy ! She knows by instinct what man hardly 
ever knows; she knows her victim's nervous sys- 
tem and exactly what nerve centers to strike to make 
it motionless without killing it. Where does she 
receive this knowledge ? From the power that rules 
the world, and guides the ignorant by the laws of 
its inspiration. 

I will tell you about another encounter of a Sand- 
Wasp with a Gray Worm which I witnessed. It was 
in May, when I detected a Sand-Wasp giving a last 
sweep of the rake to her burrow, on the smooth, 
hard path. She had paralyzed her Caterpillar, prob- 
ably, and left it a few yards away from the home 
while she made ready the entrance. At last the cave 
is pronounced spick and span, and the doorway 
thought wide enough to admit the bulky prey. The 
Sand-Wasp sets off in search of her captive. 

She finds it easily. It is a Gray Worm, lying on 
the ground: but, alas, the Ants have found it, too; 
they have already invaded it. The Wasp now scorns 



98 INSECT ADVENTURES 

It. She will not have anything to do with a Worm 
which she must share with Ants. To drive them 
away is impossible; for each one sent to the right- 
about, ten would return to the attack. So the Wasp 
seems to think; for she goes on with her hunting, 
without indulging in useless strife. 

She explores the soil within a radius of ten feet 
from the nest, on foot, little by little, without hur- 
rying; she lashes the ground continually with her 
antennse curved like a bow. For nearly three hours. 
In the heat of the sun, I watch her search. What 
a difficult thing a Gray Worm is to find, for a Wasp 
who needs It just at that moment! 

It Is no less difficult for man. I have a plan. I 
wish to give the Wasp a Worm In order to see how 
she paralyzes it. 

Favier, my old soldier friend. Is there, garden- 
ing. I call out to him: 

"Come here, quick; I want some Gray Worms!" 

I explain the thing to him. He understands at 
once and goes in search. He digs at the foot of the 
lettuces, he scrapes among the strawberry-beds, he 
Inspects the iris-borders. I know his sharp eyes 
and his intelligence ; I have everv confidence In him. 
Meanwhile, time passes, 

"Well, Favier? Where's that Gray Worm?" 

"I can't find one, sir." 

"Bother! Then come to the rescue, you others! 
Claire, Aglae, all of you ! Hurry up, hunt and 
find!" 

The whole family Is put at work. All Its members 



THE HAIRY SAND-WASPS 99 

become very active. But nothing turns up : three 
hours pass and not one of us has found the Cater- 
pillar. 

The Sand-Wasp does not find it either. I see her 
hunting persistently in spots where the earth is 
slightly cracked. She wears herself out in clearing- 
operations; with a great effort she removes lumps of 
earth the size of an apricot-stone. These spots are 
soon given up, however. Then a suspicion comes to 
me : perhaps the Gray Worm, foreseeing a gathering 
storm, has dug its way lower down. The huntress 
Wasp very well knows where it lies, but cannot get 
it out from its deep hiding-place. Wherever the 
Sand-Wasp scratches, there must a Gray Worm be ; 
she leaves the place only because she cannot dig deep 
enough. It was very stupid of me not to have 
thought of this earlier. Would such an experienced 
huntress pay any attention to a place where there 
Is really nothing? What nonsense! 

I make up my mind to help her. The insect, at 
this moment, is digging a tilled and absolutely bare 
spot. It leaves the place, as It has already done with 
so many others. I myself continue the work, with 
the blade of a knife. I do not find anything, either; 
and I leave It. The Insect comes back and again 
begins to scratch at a certain part of my excavations. 
I understand: 

*'Get out of that, you clumsy fellow!" the Wasp 
seems to say. ''I'll show you where the thing lives !" 

I dig at the spot she indicates and unearth a Gray 
Worm. Well done, my clever Sand-Wasp ! Did I 



100 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



not say that you would never have raked at an empty 
burrow? 

Following the same system, I obtain a second 
Gray Worm, followed by a third and a fourth. The 
digging is always done at bare spots that have been 
turned by the pitchfork a few months earlier. There 
is absolutely nothing to show the presence of the 




Caterpillar from without. Well, Favier, Claire, 
Aglae, and the rest of you, what have you to say? 
In three hours you have not been able to dig me up 
a single Gray Worm, whereas this clever huntress 
supplies me with as many as I want, once that I have 
thought of coming to her assistance ! 



THE HAIRY SAND-WASPS loi 



THE ATTACK 

I leave the Wasp her fifth Worm, which she un- 
earths with my help. I will tell in numbered para- 
graphs the various acts of the gorgeous drama that 
passes before my eyes. I am lying on the ground, 
close to the slaughterer, and not one detail escapes 
me. 

1. The Sand-Wasp seizes the Caterpillar by the 
back of the neck with the curved pincers of her jaws. 
The Gray Worm struggles violently, rolling and un- 
rolling its body. The Wasp is quite unconcerned: 
she stands aside and thus avoids the shocks. Her 
sting strikes the Caterpillar at the joint between the 
first ring and the head, in the middle of the under 
side, at a spot where the skin is more delicate. This 
is the most important blow, the one which will 
master the Gray Worm and make it more easy to 
handle. 

2. The Sand-Wasp now leaves her prey. She 
flattens herself on the ground, with wild movements, 
rolling on her side, twitching and dangling her limbs, 
fluttering her wings, as though in danger of death. 
I am afraid that the huntress has received a nasty 
wound in the contest. I am overcome with emotion 
at seeing the plucky Wasp finish so piteously. But 
suddenly the Wasp recovers, smooths her wings, 
curls her antennae, and returns briskly to the attack. 
What I had taken for the convulsions of approach- 
ing death was the wild enthusiasm of victory. The 




"The gorgeous drama." 



THE HAIRY SAND-WASPS 103 

Wasp was congratulating herself on the way she 
had floored the enemy. 

3. The Wasp grips the Caterpillar by the skin 
of the back, a little lower than before, and pricks the 
second ring, still on the under side. I then see her 
gradually going back along the Gray Worm, each 
time seizing the back a little lower down, clasping 
it with the jaws, those wide pincers, and each time 
driving the sting Into the next ring. In this way 
aKe wounded the first three rings, with the true legs ; 
the next two rings, which are legless; and the four 
rings, with the pro-legs, which are not real legs, but 
simply little protuberances. In all, nine stings. After 
the first prick of the needle, the Gray Worm offers 
but a feeble resistance. 

4. Lastly, the Sand-Wasp, opening the forceps 
of her jaws to their full width, seizes the Cater- 
pillar's head and crunches It, squeezing It with a 
series of leisurely movements, without creating a 
wound. She pauses after each squeezing as If to 
learn the effect produced; she stops, waits, and 
begins again. This handling of the brain cannot be 
carried too far, or the insect would die; and strange 
to say, the Wasp does not wish to kill the Cater- 
pillar. 

The surgeon has finished. The poor patient, the 
Worm, lies on the ground on Its side, half doubled 
up. It Is motionless, lifeless, unable to resist when 
the Wasp drags It to the burrow, unable to harm 
the grub that Is to feed upon It. This Is the purpose 
of the Wasp's proceedings. She Is procuring food for 



104 INSECT ADVENTURES 

her babies, which are as yet non-existent. She will 
drag the Caterpillar to her burrow and lay an egg 
upon it. When the grub comes out of the egg, it will 
have the Caterpillar to feed upon. But suppose this 
Caterpillar were active? One movement of his body 
would crush the egg against the wall of the cell. No, 
the Caterpillar must be motionless; but it must not 
be dead, for if It were. It would speedily decay and 
be unfit eating for the fastidious little grub. The 
Wasp, therefore, drives her poisoned sting into the 
nerve-centers of every segment whose movement 
could hurt the grub-baby. She does better than that. 
The victim's head Is still unhurt, the jaws are at 
work; they might easily, as the Caterpillar is 
dragged to the burrow, grip some bit of straw in 
the ground and stop progress. The Caterpillar, 
therefore, must be rendered torpid, and the Wasp 
does this by munching his head. She does not use 
her sting on the brain, because that would kill the 
Caterpillar; she merely squeezes It enough to make 
the Caterpillar unconscious. 

Though we admire the wonderful skill of the 
Wasp, we cannot help feeling sorry for the victim, 
the poor Gray Worm. If we were farmers, how- 
ever, we should not waste any pity on the Worm. 
These Caterpillars are a dreadful scourge to agricul- 
tural crops, as well as to garden produce. Curled 
in their burrows by day, they climb to the surface 
at night and gnaw the base or collar of plants. Every- 
thing suits them : ornamental plants and edible plants 
alike, flower-beds, market-gardens, and plants in 



THE HAIRY SAND-WASPS 105 

fields. When a seedling withers without apparent 
cause, draw it to you gently ; and the dying plant will 
come up, but maimed, cut from its root. The Gray 
Worm has passed that way in the night; its greedy 
jaws have cut the plant. It is as bad as the White 
Worm, the grub of the Cockchafer. When it 
swarms in a beet-country, the damage amounts to 
millions. This is the terrible enemy against which 
the Sand-Wasp comes to our aid. Let us not feel 
too sorry for it! 




CHAPTER IX 



THE WASP AND THE CRICKET 



AT the end of July the Yellow-winged Wasp 
tears the cocoon that has protected her till 
then and flies out of her underground cradle. Dur- 
ing the whole of August she is often seen flitting 
about the fields in search of honey. But this careless 
life does not last long, for by the beginning of Sep- 
tember the Wasp must begin to dig her burrows and 
search for game for her family. For her burrows 
she usually chooses some sandy soil on the high 
banks by the side of the road. One thing is neces- 
sary: the site must receive plenty of sunshine. 

Ten or twelve Yellow-winged Wasps usually 
work together. They scrape the earth with their 
fore-feet like mischievous puppies. At the same 
time, each worker sings her glad song, which is a 
shrill noise, constantly broken off and rising higher 

io6 



THE WASP AND THE CRICKET 107 

or sinking lower In a regular rhythm. One would 
think they were a troop of merry companions sing- 
ing to encourage each other In their work. Mean- 
while, the sand flies, falling in a fine dust on their 
quivering wings,; and the too-large gravel, removed 
bit by bit, rolls far away from the work yard. If a 
piece seems too heavy to be moved, the insect gets up 
steam with a shrill note which reminds one of the 
workman's *'Hoo !" 

Soon the cave takes shape; the msect aives Into 
it bodily. We still hear underground her untiring 
song, while every little while we catch a glimpse of 
her hind-legs, pushing a torrent of sand backwards 
to the mouth of the burrow. From time to time the 
Wasp comes outside the entrance to dust herself in 
the sun, and to rid herself of grains of sand. In 
spite of these interruptions, she manages to dig the 
gallery in two or three hours. Then she comes to 
her threshold to chant her triumph and give the fin- 
ishing polish to her work by smoothing out some 
unevenness and carrying away a speck or two of 
earth. 

There are two, three, or four cells In the Yellow- 
winged Wasp's burrow. In each of which lies an egg. 
But the Wasp does not content herself with 
one burrow: she digs about ten, all in the month of 
September, and she has to get food for all of them. 
She has not a moment to lose, when. In so short a 
time, she has to dig her burrows, procure a dozen 
Crickets or more for food for her families, and stop 
the burrows up again. Besides, there are gray days 



io8 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



and rainy days during the month, when she can- 
not work. 

The Yellow-winged Wasp is not content with com- 
paratively defenseless Beetles and Caterpillars; 
she hunts the powerful Cricket. Watch her 
chasing one. The terrified Cricket takes to 
flight, hopping as fast as he can; the Wasp pursues 
him hot-foot, reaches him, rushes upon him. There 
follows, In the dust, a confused struggle, wherein 
each fighter is in turn victor and vanquished, on top 
and underneath. The Issue seems doubtful. But 
at last the Wasp triumphs. In spite of his vigorous 
kicks, In spite of the snaps of his pincer-like jaws, 
the Cricket Is laid low and stretched upon his back. 




THE WASP AND THE CRICKET 109 

The Wasp places herself upon him, belly to belly, 
but In the opposite direction. She grasps one of the 
threads at the tip of the Cricket's abdomen with her 
mouth and masters with her fore-legs the convulsive 
efforts of his thick hinder-thighs. At the same time 
her middle-legs hug the heaving sides of the 
beaten Insect, and her hind-legs force the joint 
of the neck to open wide. The Wasp then 
curves herself outward so as to offer the Cricket 
no chance to bite her, and drives her poisoned sting 
once into the victim's neck, next Into the joint of the 
front two rings of the thorax, or part next the neck, 
and lastly towards the abdomen. In less time than 
It takes to tell, the murder Is done; and the Wasp, 
after making herself tidy again, gets ready to haul 
home the victim. 

You must acknowledge she knows how to fight, 
better even than the Wasps who attack Beetles, or 
those who capture Caterpillars. Those insects can- 
not fly, they have no defensive weapons. What a 
difference between them and the Cricket! The 
Cricket Is armed with dreadful jaws, capable of eat- 
ing the vitals out of the Wasp If they succeed In 
seizing her; he has a pair of powerful legs, regular 
clubs bristling with a double row of sharp spikes, 
which can be used by the Cricket either to hop out 
of his enemy's reach, or to send her sprawling with 
brutal kicks. 

Notice, therefore, the precautions the Wasp takes 
before setting her sting In motion. She turns the 
Cricket upon his back so that he cannot use his hind- 



no INSECT ADVENTURES 

legs to escape. She controls his spurred legs with 
her fore-feet, so that he cannot kick her; and she 
keeps his jaws at a distance with her own hind-legs. 
She makes him motionless by grasping one of the 
threads at the end of the abdomen. An athlete, an 
expert wrestler, could not do better. 

Consider, also, her science. She wishes to para- 
lyze the prey without killing it, so that it will remain 
in a fit condition for food for her babies for many 
weeks. If she should leave the Cricket any power 
of motion, it would knock the eggs off ; if she killed 
it entirely, it would decay. How does she produce 
this paralysis? She does just what a surgeon would 
advise her to do; she strikes the nerve-centers of the 
different parts of the Cricket's body which are likely 
to do harm, the three nervous centers that set the 
legs in motion. 

If we look at the Cricket a week, two weeks, or 
even longer after the murder, we shall see the abdo- 
men moving slightly, a sign that he is still alive. 

After the Wasp has paralyzed her Cricket, she 
grips him with her feet, holding also one of his an- 
tennae in her mouth, and in this manner flies off with 
him. She has to stop sometimes to take a minute's 
rest. Then she once more takes up her burden and, 
with a great effort, carries him in one flight almost 
to her home. The Wasp I am watching alights in 
the middle of a Wasp village. She makes the rest 
of her way on foot. She bestrides her victim and 
advances, bearing her head proudly aloft and haul- 
ing the Cricket, who trails between her legs, by the 



THE WASP AND THE CRICKET iii 

antennse held between her jaws. If the ground is 
bare, she has an easy time ; but sometimes she meets 
with some spreading grass shoots, and then it is 
curious to see her marches and countermarches, her 
repeated attempts to get past, which she finally does 
by some means or other, either by flight or by tak- 
ing another path. 

At last she reaches home and places the Cricket 
so that his antennae exactly touch the mouth of the 
burrow. The Wasp then leaves him and goes down 
hastily to the bottom of the cave, perhaps to see 
that everything is as it should be and no other Wasp 
has made her nest there. A few seconds later she 
reappears, showing her head out of doors and giv- 
ing a little cry of delight. The Cricket's antennae are 
within her reach; she seizes them, and the game 
is brought quickly down to the lair. 

When the Yellow-winged Wasp has stacked up 
three or four Crickets for each cell, she lays an egg 
on one of them and closes the burrow. She does 
this by sweeping the heaped-up sand outside the door 
down the burrow. She mixes fair-sized bits of 
gravel with the sand to make it stronger. If she 
cannot find gravel of the right size within reach, she 
goes and searches in the neighborhood, and seems 
to choose the pieces as carefully as a mason would 
choose the chief stones for his building. In a few 
moments she has closed up the underground dwell- 
ing so carefully that nothing remains to show where 
it has been. Then she goes on, digs another bur- 
row, catches game for it, and walls it up. And so 



112 INSECT ADVENTURES 

on. When she Is through laying all her eggs, she 
goes back to the flowers, leading a careless, wander- 
ing life until the first cold snap puts an end to her 
existence, which has been so full of duties and ex- 
citements. 







CHAPTER X 

THE FLY-HUNTING WASP 

YOU have read about the Wasps who store 
up paralyzed Caterpillars and Crickets for 
their babies' food, then close up the cells and fly 
away; now you shall hear about a Wasp who feeds 
her children with fresh food from day to day. This 
is the Bembex, or the Fly-hunting Wasp, as I shall 
call her. 

This Wasp digs her burrows in very soft, light 
sand, under a blazing sun and a blue sky. I go 
out and watch her sometimes on an unshaded plain 
where it is so hot that the only way to avoid sun- 
stroke is to lie down at full length behind some 
sandy knoll, put one's head down a rabbit-burrow, 
or provide one's self with a large umbrella. The 
latter is what I did. If the reader will sit with me 
under the umbrella at the end of July, he will see 
the following sight. 

A Fly-hunting Wasp arrives suddenly and alights, 
113 



114 INSECT ADVENTURES 

without any hesitation, at a spot which to my eyes 
looks exactly like the rest of the sandy surface. With 
her front feet, which are armed with rows of stiff 
hairs and remind one at the same time of a broom, 
a brush, and a rake, she works at clearing her 
underground dwelling. The insect stands on her 
four hind-legs, while the front ones first scratch and 
then sweep the shifting sand. She shoots the sand 
backwards so fast that it gushes in a curve like a 
stream of water, falling to the ground seven or 
eight inches away. This spray of dust Is kept up 
evenly for five or ten minutes at a time by the swift, 
graceful Wasp. 

Mingled with this dust are tiny bits of wood, de- 
cayed leaf stalks, particles of grit and other rubbish. 
The Wasp picks them up in her mouth and carries 
them away. This is really the purpose of her dig- 
ging. She is sifting out the sand at the entrance 
to her home, which Is all ready underground, hav- 
ing been dug some time before. The Wasp wishes 
to make the sand at the entrance to her burrow fine, 
light, and free from any obstacle, so that when she 
alights suddenly with a Fly for her children, she can 
dig an entrance to her home quickly. She does this 
work in her spare time, when her larva has enough 
food to last it for a while, so that she does not 
need to go hunting. She seems happy as she works 
so fast and eagerly, and who knows that she is not 
expressing in this way her mother's satisfaction In 
watching over the roof of her house where her baby 
lives? 



THE FLY-HUNTING WASP 



115 



If we should take a knife and dig down into the 
sand where the Wasp-mother is scratching, we 
should find, first, an entrance corridor, as wide as 
one's finger, and perhaps eight to twelve inches 
long, and then a room, hollowed out down below 
where the sand is damper and firmer. It is large 
enough to contain two or three walnuts; but all it 
does hold at present is a Fly, a golden-green Green- 
bottle, with a tiny white egg laid on the side. This 
is the Wasp's tgg. It will hatch out in about twen- 
ty-four hours, into a little worm, which will feed on 
the dead Fly. For the Fly is dead, and not para- 
lyzed, as the food of other Wasp-babies often is. 

At the end of two or three days the Wasp-grub 
will have eaten up the little Fly. Meanwhile 
the mother Wasp remains in the neighborhood and 
you see her sometimes feeding herself by sipping the 
honey of the field flowers, sometimes settling hap- 
pily on the burning sand, no doubt watching the out- 
side of the house. Every now and then she sifts 



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ii6 INSECT ADVENTURES 

the sand at the entrance; then she flies away for a 
while. But, however long she may stay away, she 
never forgets the young larva who has food enough 
to last only a short time; her mother's instinct tells 
her the hour when the grub has finished its food and 
wants more. She therefore returns to the nest, 
which, you must remember, does not show in the 
least from the surface of the ground, as the shift- 
ing sand has filled in the entrance ; she knows, how- 
ever, exactly where to look for it; she goes down 
into the earth, this time carrying a larger piece of 
game. After leaving this in the underground room 
she again leaves the house and waits outside until 
the time comes to serve a third course. This is not 
long, for the little worm is getting a larger appetite 
all the time. Again the mother appears with 
another Fly. 

For nearly two weeks, while the larva is growing 
up, the meals thus follow in succession, one by one, 
as needed, and coming closer together as the infant 
grows larger. Towards the end of the two weeks, 
the mother is kept as busy as she can be satisfying 
her hungry child, now a large, fat grub. You see 
her at every moment coming back with a fresh cap- 
ture, at every moment setting out again upon the 
chase. She does not cease her efforts until the grub 
is stuffed full and refuses its food. I have counted 
and found that sometimes the grub will eat as many 
as eighty-two Flies. 

I have wondered sometimes why this Wasp does 
not lay up a store of food, as the other Wasps do, 



THE FLY-HUNTING WASP 117 

close the door of her burrow and fly away, instead 
of waiting about, as she does so patiently. I real- 
ize that she does not do so because her Flies would 
not keep; they would spoil and be unfit for eat- 
ing. But why does she kill the Fly instead of para- 
lyzing it? Possibly because the Fly would not make 
a satisfactory preserved food; it is so slight and 
frail, it would shrivel up and there would be nothing 
of it; it must be eaten fresh to be worth anything. 
Another reason almost certainly is that the Fly has 
to be captured very quickly, on the wing. There is 
not time for the Wasp to aim her sting, as the 
Wasps do who are killing clumsy Worms or fat 
Crickets on the ground. She must attack with claws, 
mouth or sting wherever she can, and this method 
of attack kills at once. 

It is not easy to surprise a Wasp hunting, as she 
flies far away from where her burrow lies; but one 
day I had a quite unexpected experience as I was 
sitting in the hot sun under my umbrella. I was not 
the only one to enjoy the shade of the umbrella. 
Gad-flies of various kinds would take refuge under 
the silken dome and sit peacefully on every part of 
the tightly stretched cover. To while away the 
hours when I had nothing to do, it amused me to 
watch their great gold eyes, which shone like car- 
buncles under my umbrella; I loved to follow their 
solemn progress when some part of the ceiling be- 
came too hot and obliged them to move a little way 
on. 

One day, bang I The tight cover resounded like 



ii8 INSECT ADVENTURES 

the skin of a drum. Perhaps an oak had dropped 
an acorn on the umbrella. Presently, one after the 
other, bang, bang, bang! Can some practical joker 
be flinging acorns or little pebbles at my umbrella? 
I leave my tent and look around: nothing! I hear 
the same sharp sounds again. I look up at the ceil- 
ing and the mystery is explained. The Fly-hunting 
Wasps of the neighborhood, who all eat Gad-flies, 
had discovered the rich game that was keeping me 
company and were impudently coming into my shel- 
ter to seize the Flies on the ceiling. Things were 
going to perfection : I had only to sit still and look. 

Every moment a Wasp would enter, swift as 
lightning, and dart up to the silken ceiling, which 
resounded with a sharp thud. Some rumpus was go- 
ing on aloft, where so lively was the fray that one 
could not tell which was attacker, which attacked. 
The struggle did not last long: the Wasp would soon 
retire with a victim between her legs. The dull herd 
of Gad-flies would not leave the dangerous shelter. 
It was so hot outside ! Why get excited? 

Let us w*atch the Wasp as she returns to the bur- 
row with her capture held under her body between 
her legs. As she draws near her home, she makes 
a shrill humming, which has something plaintive 
about it and which lasts until the insect sets foot to 
earth. The Wasp hovers above the sand and then 
dips down, very slowly and cautiously, all the time 
humming. If her keen eyes see anything unusual, 
she slows up In her descent, hovers for a second or 
two, goes up again, comes down again and flies away, 




One day, bang!" 



120 INSECT ADVENTURES 

swift as an arrow. We shall see in a few moments 
what it is that makes her hesitate. Soon she is back 
again, looks at things once more from a height, then 
comes down slowly and alights at a spot which looks 
exactly like the rest of the sandy surface. 

I think she has landed more or less on chance, and 
will now look about for the entrance to her home. 
But no; she is exactly over her burrow. Without 
once letting go her prey, she scratches a little in front 
of her, gives a push with her head, and at 
once enters, carrying the Fly. The sand falls in, 
the door closes, and the Wasp is at home. It makes 
no difference that I have seen this Wasp return to 
her nest hundreds of times ; I am always astonished 
to behold the keen-sighted insect find without hesi- 
tation a door which does not show at all. 

The Wasp does not always hesitate in the air be- 
fore alighting at her house, and when she does, it Is 
because she sees her nest is threatened by a very 
grave danger. Her plaintive hum shows anxiety; she 
never gives it when there is no peril. But who is 
the enemy? It is a miserable little Fly, feeble and 
harmless in appearance, whom we have mentioned 
in another chapter. The Wasp, the scourge of the 
Fly-tribe, the fierce slayer of large Gad-flies, does 
not enter her home because she sees herself watched 
by another Fly, a tiny dwarf, who would make 
scarcely a mouthful for her larvae. 

I feel just as I should if I saw my Cat fleeing In 
terror from a Mouse. Why does the Wasp not 
pounce upon the little wretch of a Fly and get rid 



THE FLY-HUNTING WASP 121 




of her? I do not know. It must be because this 
wretched little Fly has her tiny part to play in the 
universe, as well as the Wasp. These things are 
ordered somehow, in a way we do not understand. 
As I shall mention elsewhere, this is the Fly that 
lays her eggs on the game the Wasp puts in the nest 
for her own baby; and the Fly's offspring eat the 
food of the Wasp-grub, and sometimes eat the grub 
itself, if provisions are scarce. The way the Fly 
manages her business is interesting. She never en- 
ters the Wasp's burrow, but she waits with the great- 
est patience for the moment when the Wasp dives 
into her home, with her game clasped between her 
legs. Just as she has half her body well within the 
entrance and is about to disappear underground, the 
Fly dashes up and settles on the piece of game that 
projects a little way beyond the hinder end of the 
Wasp; and while the latter is delayed by the diffi- 
culty of entering, the former, with wonderful swift- 
ness, lays an egg on the prey, or even two or three 
in quick succession. The hesitation of the Wasp, 
hampered by her load, lasts but the twinkling of an 



122 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



eye. No matter: the Gnat has accomplished what 
she wished to, and now she goes and squats in the 
sun, close to the burrow, and plans fresh deeds of 
darkness. 

A number of these Flies, usually three or four, are 
apt to station themselves on the sand at one time 
near a burrow, of which they well know the en- 
trance, carefully hidden though it be. Their dull- 
brown color, their great blood-red eyes, their aston- 
ishing patience, have often reminded me of a picture 
of brigands, clad in dark clothes, with red handker- 
chiefs around their heads, waiting in ambush for 
an opportunity to hold up some travelers. 







THE FLY-HUNTING WASP 123 

It is when the poor Wasp sees these brigands that 
she hesitates. At last she comes nearer, however. 
The Midges then take flight and follow behind the 
Wasp. If she turns, they turn also, so as to keep 
exactly behind her; if she advances, they advance; 
if she retreats, they retreat. She cannot keep them 
off. At last she grows weary and alights ; they also 
alight, still behind her. The Wasp darts off again, 
with an indignant whimpering; the Midges dart 
after her. The Wasp tries one more way to get rid 
of them. She flies far away at full speed, hoping 
that they will follow and lose their way. But they 
know too much for that. They settle down on the 
sand again near the burrow and wait for her to come 
back. Come she does; the pursuit begins all over 
again; the mother's patience Is worn out, and at last 
they have a chance to lay their eggs as she goes 
into the burrow. 

We shall end our chapter with the story of the 
Wasp-grub to whom no accidents happen, into whose 
burrow no nasty Fly-eggs enter. For two weeks it 
eats and grows; then it begins to weave its cocoon. 
It has not very much silk in its body to use for this, 
so It uses grains of sand to strengthen It. First it 
pushes away the remains of its food and forces them 
Into a corner of the cell. Then, having swept its 
floor, it fixes to the different walls of Its room 
threads of a beautiful white silk, forming a web 
which makes a kind of scaffold for the next work. 

It then weaves a hammock of silk in the center of 
the threads. This hammock is like a sack open wide 



124 INSECT ADVENTURES 

at one end and closed at the other in a point. The 
grub, leaning half out of its hammock, picks up the 
sand almost grain by grain with its mouth. If any 
grain found is too large, it is thrown away. When 
the sand is sorted in this way, the grub brings some 
into the hammock in its mouth, and begins to spread 
it in an even layer on the lower side of the hammock- 
sack; it adds grains also to the upper side, fixing 
them in the silk as one would place stones in putty. 
The cocoon is still open at one end. It is time 
to close it. The grub weaves a cap of silk which 
fits the mouth of the sack exactly, and lays grains of 
sand one by one upon this foundation. The cocoon 
is all finished now, except that the grub gives some 
finishing touches to the inside by glazing the walls 
with varnish to protect its delicate skin from the 
rough sand. It then goes peacefully to sleep, to 
wait for its transformation into a Wasp like its 
mother. 




CHAPTER XI 



PARASITES 



IN August or September, let us go into some 
gorge with bare and sun-scorched sides. When 
we find a slope well-baked by the summer heat, a 
quiet corner with the temperature of an oven, we 
shall call a halt; there is a fine harvest to be gathered 
here. This tropical land is the native soil of a host 
of Wasps and Bees, some of them busily piling the 
household provisions in underground warehouses — 
here a stack of Weevils, Locusts or Spiders, there 
a whole assortment of Flies, Bees, or Caterpillars, 
— while others are storing up honey in wallets or 
clay pots, cottony bags or urns made with pieces of 
leaves. 

With the Bees and Wasps who go quietly about 
their business, mingle others whom we call parasites, 
prowlers hurrying from one home to the next, lying 

125 



126 INSECT ADVENTURES 

In wait at the doors, watching for a chance to settle 
their family at the expense of others. 

It Is something like the struggle that goes on In 
our world. No sooner has a worker by means of 
hard labor gotten together a fortune for his chil- 
dren than those who have not worked come hurry- 
ing up to fight for Its possession. To one who saves 
there are sometimes five, six or more bent upon his 
ruin; and often It ends not merely In robbery but In 
black murder! The worker's family, the object of 
so much care, for whom that home was built and 
those provisions stored. Is devoured by the In- 
truders. Grubs or Insect-babies are shut up in cells 
closed on every side, protected by silken coverings, 
in order that they may sleep quietly while the changes 
needed to make them into full-grown Insects take 
place. In vain are all these precautions taken. An 
enemy will succeed in getting Into the impregnable 
fortress. Each foe has his special tactics to accom- 
plish this — tactics contrived with the most surpris- 
ing skill. See, some strange Insect Inserts her egg 
by means of a probe beside the torpid grub, the 
rightful owner; or else a tiny worm, an atom, 
comes creeping and crawling, slips In and reaches 
the sleeper, who will never wake again, because the 
ferocious visitor will eat him up. The Interloper 
makes the victim's cell and cocoon his own cell and 
cocoon; and next year, instead of the mistress of the 
house, there will come from below ground the ban- 
dit who stole the dwelling and ate the occupant. 

Look at this one, striped black, white, and red, 



PARASITES 



127 



with the figure of a clumsy, hairy Ant. She explores 
the slope on foot, looks at every nook and corner, 
sounds the soil with her antenna?. She is a kind of 
Wasp without wings, named Mutilla, the terrible 
enemy of the other Wasp-grubs sleeping in their 
cradles. Though the female Mutilla has no wings, 
she carries a sharp dagger, or sting. If you saw her, 
you might think she was a sort of sturdy Ant, gayer 
in dress than other Ants. If you watched her for 
some time, you would see her, after trotting about 
for a bit, stop somewhere and begin to scratch and 
dig, finally laying bare a burrow underground, of 
which there was no trace outside; but she can see 
what we cannot. She goes into the burrow, stays 




128 INSECT ADVENTURES 

there for a while, and at last reappears to replace 
the rubbish and close the door as it was at the start. 
The abominable deed is done : the Mutilla's egg has 
been laid in another's cocoon, beside the slumbering 
grub or larva on which it will feed. 

Here are other insects, all aglitter with gleams of 
gold, emerald, blue, and purple. They are the hum- 
ming-birds of the insect-world, and are called the 
Golden Wasps. You would never think of them as 
thieves or murderers; but they, too, feed on the 
children of other Wasps. One of them, half emer- 
ald and half pale-pink, boldly enters the burrow of 
a Fly-hunting Wasp at the very moment when the 
mother is at home, bringing a fresh piece of game 
to her babies, whom she feeds from day to day. The 
elegant criminal, the Golden Wasp who does not 
know how to dig, takes this moment when the door 
is open to enter. If the mother were away, the 
house would be shut up, and the Golden Wasp, that 
sneak-thief in royal robes, could not get in. She 
enters, therefore, dwarf as she is, the house of the 
giantess whose ruin she is planning; she makes her 
way right to the back, never bothering about the 
Wasp, with her sting and her powerful jaws. The 
Wasp-mother either does not know the danger or is 
paralyzed with terror. She lets the strange Wasp 
have her way. 

Next year, if we open the cells of the poor Fly- 
hunting Wasp, we shall find some v/hich contain a 
russet-silk cocoon, the shape of a thimble, with its 
opening closed with a flat lid. In this silky covering, 



PARASITES 



129 



which IS protected by the hard outer shell, Is a grub 
of the Golden Wasp. As for the grub of the Fly- 
hunter, that grub which wove the silk and encrusted 
the outer casing with sand. It has disappeared en- 
tirely, all but a few tattered shreds of skin. Disap- 
peared how? The Golden Wasp's grub has eaten it. 
One of these splendid-appearing, criminal Golden 
Wasps Is dressed in lapis-lazuli on the front part of 
the body and In bronze and gold on the abdomen, 
with a scarf of blue at the end. When one of the 
Mason-wasps has built on the rock her heap of 
dome-shaped cells, with a covering of little pebbles 
set In the plaster, when the grubs have eaten up their 
store of Caterpillars and hung their rooms with silk, 




I30 INSECT ADVENTURES 

wc see the Golden Wasp settle on the outside of the 
nest. Probably some tiny crack, some defect in the 
cement, allows her to Insert her probe and lay her 
egg. At any rate, about the end of the following 
May, the Mason-wasp's chamber holds a cocoon 
which again Is shaped like a thimble. From this 
cocoon comes a Golden Wasp. There is nothing 
left of the Mason-wasp's grub; the Golden Wasp 
has gorged herself upon it. 

Flies, as we have seen, often act the part of rob- 
bers. They are not the least to be dreaded, though 
they are weak, sometimes so feeble that one cannot 
take them In his fingers without crushing them. One 
species called Bombylil are clad in velvet so delicate 
that the least touch rubs it off. They are fluffs of 
down almost as frail as a snowflake, but they can 
fly with wonderful quickness. See this one, hover- 
ing motionless two feet above the ground. Her 
wings vibrate so rapidly one cannot see the motion 
at all, and they seem to be In repose. The Insect 
looks as though It were hung at one point in space 
by some Invisible thread. You make a movement, 
and your Fly has disappeared. You look about for 
her. There Is nothing here, nothing there. Then 
where Is she? Close by you. She is back where she 
started, before you could see where she went to. 
What is she doing, there In the air? She is up to 
some mischief; she Is watching for a chance to leave 
her egg where it will feed on some other insect's 
provisions. I do not know yet what «ort of insect 
she preys upon, nor what she wishes for her chil- 



PARASITES 131 

dren, whether honey, game, or the grubs themselves. 

I know more about the actions of certain tiny, 
pale-gray Flies, called Tachinae, who, cowering on 
the sand in the sun, near a burrow, patiently wait 
for the hour at which to strike the fell blow. When 
the different Wasps return from hunting, one kind 
with her Gad-fly, another with a Bee, another with 
a Beetle, another with a Locust, at once the Gray 
Flies are there, coming and going, turning and twist- 
ing with the Wasp, always behind her and never 
losing her. At the moment when the Wasp huntress 
goes indoors, with her captured game between her 
legs, they fling themselves on her prey, which is on 
the point of disappearing underground, and quickly 
lay their eggs upon it. The thing is done in the 
twinkling of an eye; before the Wasp has crossed 
the threshold of her home, the food for her babies 
holds the germs of a new set of guests, who will feed 
on It and starve the children of the house to death. 

Perhaps, after all, we should not blame too much 
these insects which feed on others, or on the food of 
others. An Idle human being who feeds at other 
people's tables Is contemptible; we call him a para- 
site because he lives at his neighbor's expense. The 
Insect never does this ; that Is to say. It does not live 
on the food of another of the same species. You 
remember the Mason-bees: not one of the Bees 
touches another's honey, unless the owner Is dead or 
has stayed away a long time. The other Bees and 
Wasps behave In the same way. 

What we call parasitism In Insects Is really a kind 



132 INSECT ADVENTURES 

of hunting. The Mutilla, for instance, is a huntress, 
and her prey is the grub of another kind of Wasp, 
just as the game of this other kind of Wasp may be 
a Caterpillar or a Beetle. When it comes to this, 
we are all hunters, or thieves, whichever way you 
look at it, and Man the greatest of all. He steals 
the milk from the Calf, he steals the honey from the 
children of the Bee, just as the Gray Fly takes the 
food of the Wasps' babies. She does it to feed her 
children; and Man helps himself to everything he 
can find to feed his. 




CHAPTER XII 

FLY SCAVENGERS 

THERE are various kinds of insects that per- 
form a very useful work in the world, for 
which they do not always receive credit. When you 
pass a dead Mole in the fields, and see Ants, 
Beetles and Flies on it, you shudder and get away 
from the spot as quickly as possible. You think they 
are horrid, dirty insects; but they are not; they are 
busy making the world a cleaner place for you to live 
in. Let us watch some of these Flies at work, and 
we shall get an idea of the wonderful things they do 
in this connection. 

You have seen the Greenbottle Flies. They are a 
beautiful golden-green which shines like metal, and 
they have red eyes, set in a silver border. They 
scent dead animals from far away, and rush to lay 
their eggs in them. A few days afterward, the 
flesh of the corpse has turned into liquid, in which 
are thousands of tiny grubs with pointed heads. This 
is very unpleasant, perhaps you think; but, after all. 
It is the best and easiest way for dead things to dis- 
appear, to be absorbed In the soil and pass on to 

133 



134 INSECT ADVENTURES 

another form of life. And it is the little Greenbottle 
worms that produce this liquid. 

If the corpse were left undisturbed, it would dry 
up and take a long while to disappear. The Green- 
bottle grubs, and the grubs of other Flies as well, 
have a wonderful power of turning solid things into 
liquid. When I give the Greenbottle grubs a piece 
of hard-boiled white of egg to feed upon, they turn 
it at once into a colorless liquid which looks like 
water. They have some sort of pepsin which comes 
out of their mouths and does this work. It is like the 
gastric juice in our stomach, which dissolves and ren- 
ders digestible the food we eat. The grubs or worms 
live on the broth they make in this way until it has 
all disappeared. 

Other Flies whose worms do this work are the 
Gray Flesh-flies and the big Bluebottles, whom you 
often see buzzing about the window-panes. Do not 
let them come near the meat for your dinner, for If 
they do they will surely make it uneatable. Out In 
the fields, however, they are In their right element. 
They give back to life, with all speed, the remains 
of that which has lived; they change corpses into an 
essence which enriches our foster-mother earth. 



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CHAPTER XIII 

THE PINE CATERPILLAR 

IN my piece of waste ground stand some pine- 
trees. Every year the Caterpillar takes posses- 
sion of them and spins his great purses in their 
branches. To protect the pine-needles, which are 
horribly eaten, I have to destroy the nests each win- 
ter with a long forked stick. 

You hungry little Caterpillars, if I let you have 
your way, I should soon be robbed of the murmur of 
my once so leafy pines. But I am going to make a 
compact with you. You have a story to tell. Tell 
it to me; and for a year, for two years or longer, 
until I know more or less about it, I will leave you 
undisturbed. 

The result of my compact with the Caterpillars 
is that I soon have some thirty nests within a few 
steps of my door. With such treasures daily before 
my eyes, I cannot help seeing the Pine Caterpillar's 

135 



136 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




story unfolded at full length. These Caterpillars 
are also called the Processionaries, because they al- 
ways go abroad in a procession, one following 
closely after the other. 

First of all, the egg. During the first half of Au- 
gust, if we look at the lower branches of the pines, 
we shall discover, here and there on the foliage, cer- 



THE PINE CATERPILLAR 137 

tain little whitish cylinders spotting the dark green. 
These are the Pine Moth's eggs; each cylinder Is 
the cluster laid by one mother. The cylinder Is like 
a tiny muff about an Inch long and a fifth or sixth of 
an Inch wide, wrapped around the base of the pine- 
needles, which are grouped in twos. This muff has 
a silky appearance and Is white slightly tinted with 
russet. It Is covered with scales that overlap like 
the tiles on a roof. The whole thing resembles 
somewhat a walnut-catkin that Is not yet full-grown. 

The scales, soft as velvet to the touch and care- 
fully laid one upon the other, form a roof that pro- 
tects the eggs. Not a drop of rain or dew can pene- 
trate. Where did this soft covering come from? 
From the mother Moth; she has stripped a part of 
her body for her children. Like the Eider-duck, she 
has made a warm overcoat for her eggs out of her 
own down. 

If one removes the scaly fleece with pincers the 
eggs appear, looking like little white-enamel beads. 
There are ^about three hundred of them In one cyl- 
inder. Quite a family for one mother ! They are 
beautifully placed, and remind one of a tiny cob of 
Indian corn. Nobody, young or old, learned or 
ignorant, could help exclaiming, on seeing the Pine 
Moth's pretty little spike, 

*'How handsome 1" 

And what will strike us most will be not the beau- 
tiful enamel pearls, but the way In which they are 
put together with such geometrical regularity. Is 
it not strange that a tiny Moth should follow the 



138 INSECT ADVENTURES 

laws of order? But the more we study nature, the 
more we realize that there is order everywhere. It 
is the beauty of the universe, the same under every 
sun, whether the suns be single or many, white or 
red, blue or yellow. Why all this regularity in the 
curve of the petals of a flower, why all this elegance 
in the chasings on a Beetle's wing-cases? Is that 
infinite grace, even in the tiniest details, the result of 
brutal, uncontrolled forces? It seems hardly likely. 
Is there not Some One back of it all, Some One who 
is a supreme lover of beauty? That would explain 
everything. 

These are very deep thoughts about a group of 
Moth-eggs that will bear a crop of Caterpillars. 
It cannot be helped. The minute we begin to in- 
vestigate the tiniest things In nature, we have to be- 
gin asking "Why?" And science cannot answer us. 
That is the strange part of it. 

The Pine Moth's eggs hatch in September. If 
one lifts the scales of the little muff, one can see black 
heads appear, which nibble and push back their cov- 
erings. The tiny creatures come out slowly all over 
the surface. They are pale yellow, with a black head 
twice as large as their body. The first thing they 
do is to eat the pine-needles on which their nest was 
placed; then they fall to on the near-by needles. 

From time to time, three or four who have eaten 
as much as they want fall into line and walk in step 
in a little procession. This is practice for the com- 
ing processions. If I disturb them, they sway the 
front half of their bodies and wag their heads. 




"When winter is near they will build a stronger 



TENT. 



140 INSECT ADVENTURES 

The next thing they do is to spin a little tent at 
the place where their nest was. The tent is a small 
ball made of gauze, supported on some leaves. In- 
side it the Caterpillars take a rest during the hottest 
part of the day. In the afternoon they leave this 
shelter and start feeding again. 

In less than an hour, you see, after coming from 
the eggy the young Caterpillar shows what he can 
do. He eats leaves, he forms processions, and he 
spins tents. 

In twenty-four hours the little tent has become 
as large as a hazel-nut, and in two weeks it is the size 
of an apple. But it is still only a temporary summer 
tent. When winter is near, they will build a stronger 
one. In the meantime, the Caterpillars eat the leaves 
around which their tent is stretched. Their house 
gives them at the same time board and lodging. This 
is a good arrangement, because it saves them from 
going out, and they are so young and so tiny that it 
is dangerous for them to go out yet awhile. 

When this tent gives way, owing to the Caterpil- 
lars having nibbled the leaves supporting it, the fam- 
ily moves on, like the Arabs, and erects a new tent 
higher up on the pine-tree. Sometimes they reach 
the very top of the tree. 

In the meantime the Caterpillars have changed 
their dress. They now wear six little bright red 
patches on their backs, surrounded with scarlet 
bristles. In the midst of these red patches are specks 
of gold. The hairs on their sides and underneath 
are whitish. 



THE PINE CATERPILLAR 141 

In November they begin to build their winter tent 
high up in the pine at the tip of a bough. They sur- 
round the leaves at the end of the bough with a net- 
work of silk. Leaves and silk together are stronger 
than silk alone. By the time it is finished it is as 
large as a half-gallon measure and about the shape of 
an egg, with a sheath over the supporting branch. In 
the center of the nest Is a milk-white mass of thickly- 
woven threads mingled with green leaves. At the 
top are round openings, the doors of the hous&, 
through which the Caterpillars go in and out. There 
is a sort of veranda on top made of threads stretched 
from the tips of the leaves projecting from the dome, 
where the Caterpillars come and doze in the sun, 
heaped one upon the other, with rounded backs. The 
threads above are an awning, to keep the sun from 
being too warm for them. 

The inside of the Caterpillars' nest Is not at all 
a tidy place; It Is full of rags, shreds of the Cater- 
pillars' skins, and dirt. 

The Caterpillars stay in their nest all night, and 
come out about ten o'clock in the morning to take 
the sun on their terrace or veranda. They spend 
the whole day there, dozing. Motionless, heaped 
together, they steep themselves deliciously in warmth 
and from time to time show their bliss by nodding 
and wagging their heads. At six or seven o'clock, 
when It grows dark, the sleepers awake, bestir them- 
selves, and go their several ways over the surface of 
the nest. 

Wherever they go, they strengthen the nest or en- 



142 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




large it by the threads of silk that come out of their 
mouths and trail behind them. More green leaves 
are taken in, and the tent becomes bigger and bigger. 
They are busy doing this for an hour or two every 
evening. So far, they have known nothing but sum- 
mer; but they seem to realize that winter is coming. 
They work away at their house with an ardor that 
seems to say: 

"Oh, how nice and warm we shall be in our beds 
here, nestling one against the other, when the pine- 
tree swings aloft its frosted candelabra ! Let us 
work with a will!" 

Yes, Caterpillars, my friends, let us work with a 
will, great and small, men and grubs alike, so that we 



THE PINE CATERPILLAR 143 

may fall asleep peacefully; you with the torpor that 
makes way for your transformation Into Moths, we 
with that last sleep which breaks off life only to re- 
new it. Let us work ! 

After the day's work comes their dinner. The 
Caterpillars come down from the nest and begin on 
the pine-needles below. It is a magnificent sight to 
see the red-coated band lined up In twos and threes 
on each needle and In ranks so closely formed that 
the green sprigs of the branch bend under the load. 
The diners, all motionless, all poking their heads 
forward, nibble In silence, placidly. Their broad 
black foreheads gleam In the rays of my lantern. 
They eat far Into the night. Then they go back to 
the nest, where, for a little longer, they continue 
spinning on the surface. It is one or two o'clock in 
the morning when the last of the band goes Indoors. 

The Pine Caterpillars eat only three kinds of pine : 
the Scotch pine, the maritime pine, and the Aleppo 
pine; never the leaves of the other cone-bearing 
trees, with one exception. In vain I offer them other 
foliage from the evergreens In my yard: the spruce, 
the yew, the juniper, the cypress. What! Am I 
asking them, the Pine Caterpillars, to bite Into that? 
They will take good care not to, in spite of the tempt- 
ing resinous smell ! They would die of hunger rather 
than touch It ! One cone-bearing tree and one only 
Is excepted: the cedar. They will eat the leaves of 
that. Why the cedar and not the others? I do not 
know. The Caterpillar's stomach Is as particular 
as ours, and has Its secrets. 



144 INSECT ADVENTURES 

To guide them as they wander about their tree, 
the Caterpillars have their silk ribbon, formed by 
threads from their mouths. They follow this on 
their return. Sometimes they miss it and strike the 
ribbon made by another band of Caterpillars. They 
follow it and reach a strange dwelling. No matter I 
There is not the least quarreling between the owners 
and the new arrivals. Both go on browsing peace- 
fully, as though nothing had happened. And all 
without hesitation, when bedtime comes, make for 
the nest, like brothers who have always lived to- 
gether; all do some spinning before going to rest, 
thicken the blanket a little, and are then swallowed 
up in the same dormitory. By accidents like these 
some nests grow to be very large. Each for all and 
all for each. So says the Processionary, who every 
evening spends his little capital of silk on enlarging 
a shelter that is often new to him. What would he 
do with his puny skein, if alone ? Hardly anything. 
But there are hundreds and hundreds of them in the 
spinning-mill; and the result of their tiny contribu- 
tions Is a stuff belonging to all, a thick blanket splen- 
didly warm in winter. In working for himself, each 
works for the others ; and the others work for him. 
Lucky Caterpillars that know nothing of property, 
the cause of strife ! 



THE PINE CATERPILLAR 145 



THE PROCESSIONARIES 

There is an old story about a Ram which was 
thrown Into the water from on board ship, where- 
upon all the sheep leaped Into the sea one after the 
other; "for," says the teller of the story, "it Is the 
nature of the sheep always to follow the first, where- 
soever It goes ; which makes Aristotle mark them for 
the most silly and foolish animals In the world." 

The Pine Caterpillars are even more sheeplike 
than sheep. Where the first goes all the others go, 
In a regular string, with not an empty space between 
them. 

They proceed In single file, each touching with 
Its head the rear of the one In front of It. No mat- 
ter how the one In front twists and turns, the whole 
procession does the same. Another odd thing: they 
are all, you might say, tight-rope walkers; they all 
follow a silken rail. The leading Caterpillar dribbles 
his thread on the path he makes, the second Cater- 
pillar steps on It and doubles It with his thread; and 
all the others add their rope, so that after the pro- 
cession has passed, there Is left a narrow white rib- 
bon whose dazzling whiteness shimmers In the sun. 
This Is a sumptuous manner of road-making: we 
sprinkle our roads with broken stones and level them 
by the pressure of a heavy steam-roller; they lay 
over their paths a soft satin rail! 

What Is the use of all this luxury? Could they 
not, like other Caterpillars, walk about without 




'They Proceed in Single File/ 



THE PINE CATERPILLAR 147 

these costly preparations? I see two reasons. It Is 
night when the Processionaries go forth to feed, and 
they follow a very winding route. They go down 
one branch, up another, from the needle to the twig, 
from the twig to the branch, and so on. When it Is 
time to go home, they would have hard work to find' 
their way If It were not for the silken thread they 
leave behind them. It reminds one of the story of 
Theseus (In the ''Tanglewood Tales," or the old 
mythologies), who would have been lost In the Cre- 
tan labyrinth If It had not been for the clue of thread 
which Ariadne gave him. 

Sometimes, too, they take longer expeditions by 
day, marching In procession for thirty yards or so. 
They are not looking for food; they are off on a trip, 
seeing the world, perhaps looking for a place to bury 
themselves later on. In the second stage before they 
become Moths. In a walk of this distance, the guid- 
ing-thread Is very necessary. 

The guiding-thread, too, brings them all back 
home to the nest when they are separated, hunting 
for food in the pine-tree. They pick up their threads, 
and come hurrying from a host of twigs, from here, 
from there, from above, from below, back to the 
group. So the silk Is more than a road: It Is a so- 
cial bond that keeps all the members of the com- 
munity united. 

At the head of every procession, long or short, 
goes the first Caterpillar, the leader. He Is 
leader only by chance ; everything depends upon the 
order In which they happen to line up. If the file 



148 INSECT ADVENTURES 

should break up, for some reason, and form again, 
some other Caterpillar might have first rank. But 
the leader's temporary duties give him airs of his 
own. While the others follow passively in a close 
file, he, the captain, tosses himself about and flings 
the front of his body hither and thither. As he 
marches ahead he seems to be seeking his way. Does 
he really explore the country? Does he choose the 
best places? Or are his hesitations only the result 
of the absence of the guiding-thread the rest follow? 
Why cannot I read what passes under his black, 
shiny skull, so like a drop of tar? To judge by ac- 
tions, he has sense enough to recognize very rough 
places, over-slippery surfaces, dusty places, and, 
above all, the threads left by other Caterpillars. 
This is all, or nearly all, that my long acquaintance 
with the Processionaries has taught me about their 
brain power. 

The processions vary greatly In length. The fin- 
est one I ever saw was twelve or thirteen yards long 
and numbered about three hundred Caterpillars, 
drawn up with absolute precision in a wavy line. If 
there were only two In a row, however, the order 
would still be perfect: the second touches and fol- 
lows the first. 

I make up my mind to play a trick upon the Cater- 
pillars which have hatched out in my greenhouse. I 
wish to arrange their silken track so that it will join 
on to itself and form an endless circuit, with no 
branch tracks leading from It. Will the Proces- 



THE PINE CATERPILLAR 149 

sionaries then go round and round upon a road that 
never comes to an end? 

Chance makes it easy for me to arrange some- 
thing of this sort. On the shelf in my greenhouse 
in which the nests are planted stand some big pahn 
vases measuring nearly a yard and a half in circum- 
ference at the top. The Caterpillars often scale the 
sides and climb up to the molding which forms a 
cornice or ledge around the opening. This place 
suits them for their processions. It provides me 
with a circular track all ready-made. 

One day I discover a numerous troop making their 
way up and gradually reaching the favorite ledge. 
Slowly, in single file, the Caterpillars climb the great 
vase, mount the ledge, and advance in regular pro- 
cession, while others are constantly arriving and con- 
tinuing the series. I wait for the string to close up, 
that is to say, for the leader, who is following the 
circular track, to return to the point from which he 
started. This happens in a quarter of an hour. I 
now have a circle of Caterpillars around the top of 
the vase. 

The next thing is to get rid of the rest of the 
Caterpillars who are on their way up and who might 
disturb the experiment; we must also do away with 
all the silken paths that lead from the top of the 
vase to the ground. With a thick hair-pencil I sweep 
away the Caterpillars; with a big brush I carefully 
rub down the vase and get rid of every thread which 
the Caterpillars have laid on the march. When 



ISO 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



these preparations are finished, a curious sight 
awaits us. 

The Caterpillars are going round and round on 
the ledge at the top of the vase. They no longer 
have a leader, because the circle Is continuous; but 
they do not know this, and each follows the one 
In front of him, who he thinks Is the leader. 

The rail of silk has grown Into a narrow ribbon, 
which the Caterpillars keep adding to. It has no 
branches anywhere. Will they walk endlessly round 
and round until their strength gives out entirely? 

Old-fashioned scholars were fond of quoting the 
tale of the Donkey who, when placed between two 
bundles of hay, starved to death because he was un- 
able to decide In favor of either. They slandered 
the worthy animal. The Donkey, who Is no more 
foolish than any one else, would feast off both 




THE PINE CATERPILLAR 151 

bundles. Will my Caterpillars show a little of his 
common-sense? Will they make up their minds to 
leave their closed circuit, to swerve to this side or 
that? I thought that they would, and I was wrong. 
I said to myself: 

"The procession will go on turning for some 
time, for an hour, two hours perhaps; then the 
Caterpillars will perceive their mistake. They will 
abandon the deceptive road and make their descent 
somewhere or other." 

That they should remain up there, hard pressed 
by hunger and the lack of shelter, when nothing pre- 
vented them from going away, seemed to me un- 
thinkable foolishness. Facts, however, forced me 
to accept the Incredible. 

The Caterpillars keep on marching round the 
vase for hours and hours. As evening comes on, 
there are more or less lengthy halts; they go more 
slowly at times, especially as It grows colder. At 
ten o'clock In the evening the walk Is little more 
than a lazy swaying of the body. Grazlng-tlme 
comes, when the other Caterpillars come crowding 
out from their nests to feast on the pine-needles. 
The ones on the vase would gladly take part In the 
feast; they must have an appetite after a ten hours' 
walk. A branch of pine Is not a hand's breadth 
away from them. To reach It they have only to go 
down the vase ; and the poor wretches, foolish slaves 
of their ribbon that they are, cannot make up their 
minds to do so. At half-past ten I leave them to go 
to bed; I am sure that during the night they will 



152 INSECT ADVENTURES 

come to their senses. At dawn I visit them again. 
They are lined up as on the day before, but motion- 
less. When the air grows a little warmer, they 
shake off their torpor, revive, and start walking 
again in their circle. 

Things go on as before during the next day. The 
following night is very cold. The poor Caterpillars 
spend a bad night. I find them clustered in two heaps 
on the top of the vase, without any attempt at or- 
der. They have huddled together to keep warm. 
Perhaps, now that they are divided into two parts, 
one of the leaders, not being obliged to follow a 
Caterpillar in front of him, will have the sense to 
break away. I am delighted to see them lining up 
by degrees into two distinct files, with two leaders, 
free to go where they please. At the sight of their 
large black heads swaying anxiously from side to 
side, I am inclined to think they will leave the en- 
chanted circle. But I am soon undeceived. As the 
ranks fill out, the two sections of the chain meet and 
the circle is formed again. Again the Caterpillars 
march round and round all day. 

The next night is again cold, and the Caterpillars 
gather in a heap which overflows both sides of the 
fatal ribbon. Next morning, when they awake, some 
of them who find themselves outside the track ac- 
tually follow a leader who climbs to the top of the 
vase and down the inside. There are seven of these 
daring ones. The rest pay no attention to them and 
walk round the circle again. 

The Caterpillars inside the vase find no food 



THE PINE CATERPILLAR 153 

there, and retrace their steps along their thread to 
the top, strike the procession again, and slip back 
into the ranks. 

Another day passes, and another. The sixth day 
is warm, and for the first time I see daring leaders, 
who, drunk with heat, stand on their hind-legs at the 
extreme edge of the vase and fling themselves for- 
ward into space. At last one of them decided to 
take the plunge. He slips under the ledge and four 
follow him. They go halfway down the vase, then 
their courage fails and they climb up again and re- 
join the procession. But a start has been made and 
a new track laid. Two days later, on the eighth day 
of the experiment, the Caterpillars — now singly, 
then in small groups, then again in strings of some 
length — come down from the ledge by starting on 
this fresh path. At sunset the last of the Cater- 
pillars is back in the nest at the foot. 

I figure that they have walked for eighty-four 
hours, and covered a good deal more than a quarter 
of a mile while traveling in the circle. It was only 
the disorder due to the cold nights that ever set them 
off the track and back to safety. Poor, stupid Cater- 
pillars! People are fond of saying that animals can 
reason, but there are no beginnings of a reasoning 
power to be seen In them. 



154 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




THE CATERPILLARS AS WEATHER PROPHETS 



In January the Pine Caterpillar sheds his skin for 
the second time. He is not nearly so pretty after- 
wards, but he has gained some new organs which 
are very useful. The hairs on the middle of his back 
are now of a dull reddish color, made paler still by 
many long white hairs mixed in with them. This 
faded costume has an odd feature. On the back 
may be seen eight gashes, like mouths, which open 
and close at the Caterpillar's vv^ill. When the mouths 
are open there appears in each of them a little swell- 
ing, which seems extremely sensitive, for at the 
slightest irritation it goes in again. 



THE PINE CATERPILLAR 155 

What IS the use of these queer mouths and tu- 
mors, as we call the little swellings? Certainly not 
to breathe with, for no one, not even a Caterpillar, 
breathes from the middle of his back. Let us con- 
sider the habits of the Pine Caterpillar, and perhaps 
we shall find out. 

The Pine Caterpillar is most active during the 
winter, and at night. But if the north wind blow 
too violently, if the cold be too piercing, if it snow, 
or rain, or if the mist thicken into an icy drizzle, the 
Caterpillars prudently stay at home, sheltering 
under their waterproof tent. 

It would be convenient to foresee these disagree- 
able weather conditions. The Caterpillar dreads 
them. A drop of rain sets him in a flutter; a snow- 
flake exasperates him. To start for the grazing- 
grounds at dark of night, in uncertain weather, 
would be dangerous, for the procession goes some 
distance and travels slowly. The flock would have a 
bad time of it before regaining shelter, if they were 
caught in a sudden storm, such as are frequent in 
the bad season of the year. Can the Pine Caterpil- 
lar possibly be able to foretell the weather? Let 
me tell how I came to suspect this. 

One night some friends came to see my Caterpil- 
lars in the greenhouse start on their nightly pilgrim- 
age. We waited till nine o'clock, then went in. But, 
but . . . what is this? Not a Caterpillar out- 
side the nests! Last night and on the nights before 
they came out in countless numbers ; to-night not one 
is to be seen. We waited till ten o'clock, till eleven, 



156 INSECT ADVENTURES 

till midnight. Then, very much mortified, I had to 
send my friends away. 

Next day I found that it had rained in the night 
and again in the morning, and that there was snow 
on the mountains. Had the Caterpillars, more sensi- 
tive than any of us to atmospheric changes, refused 
to venture out because they had known what was 
going to happen? After all, why not? I thought I 
would keep on observing them. 

I found that whenever the weather chart in the 
newspaper announced a coming depression of the 
atmosphere, such as is made by storms, my green- 
house Caterpillars stayed at home, though neither 
rain, snow, nor cold could affect them in their indoor 
shelter. Sometimes they foretold the storm two days 
ahead. Their gift for scenting bad weather very 
soon won the confidence of the household. When 
we had to go into town to buy provisions, we used 
to consult our Caterpillars the night before; and ac- 
cording to what they did, we went or stayed at home. 

The second dress of the Pine Caterpillar, there- 
fore, seems to bring with it the power to foretell the 
weather. And this power is probably given by the 
wide mouths, which yawn open to sample the air 
from time to time and to give a warning of the sud- 
den storm. 



THE PINE CATERPILLAR 157 



THE PINE MOTH 

When March comes, the Caterpillars leave their 
nest and their pine-tree and go on their final trip. 
On the twentieth of March I spent a whole morning 
watching a file about three yards long, containing 
about a hundred of the Caterpillars, now much 
faded as to their coats. The procession toils grimly 
along, up and down over the uneven ground. Then 
it breaks into groups, which halt and form inde- 
pendent processions. 

They have important business on hand. After two 
hours or so of marching, the little procession reaches 
the foot of a wall, where the soil is powdery, very 
dry, and easy to burrow in. The Caterpillar at the 
head of the row explores, and digs a little, as if to 
find out the nature of the ground. The others, 
trusting their leader, follow him blindly. What- 
ever he decides will be adopted by all. Finally the 
leading Caterpillar finds a spot he likes; he stops, 
and the others break up into a swarming heap. All 
their backs are joggling pell-mell; all their feet are 
raking; all their jaws are digging the soil. Little 
by little, they make a hole in which to bury them- 
selves. For some time to come the tunneled soil 
cracks and rises and covers itself with little mole- 
hills; then all is still. The Caterpillars have de- 
scended to a depth of three inches, and are weaving, 
or about to weave, their cocoons. 

Two weeks later I dug down and found them 



iS8 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



there, wrapped in scanty white silk, soiled with dirt. 
Sometimes, if the soil permits, they bury themselves 
as deep as nine inches. 

How, then, does the Moth, that delicate creature, 
with her flimsy wings and sweeping antennae-plumes, 
make her way above ground? She does not appear 
till the end of July or in August. By that time the 
soil is hard, having been beaten down by the rain 
and baked by the sun. Never could a Moth break 
her way through unless she had tools for the pur- 
pose and were dressed with great simplicity. 

From some cocoons that I kept in test-tubes in my 
laboratory I found that the Pine Moth, on coming 




THE PINE CATERPILLAR 159 

out of the cocoon, has her finery bundled up. She 
looks like a cylinder with rounded ends. The wings 
are pressed against her breast like narrow scarfs; 
the antennas have not yet unfolded their plumes and 
are turned back along the Moth's sides. Her hair 
fleece is laid flat, pointing backwards. Her legs 
alone are free, to help her through the soil. 

She needs even more preparation, though, to bore 
her hole. If you pass the tip of your finger over her 
head you will feel a few very rough wrinkles. The 
magnifying-glass shows us that these are hard scales, 
of which the longest and strongest is the top one, 
in the middle of her forehead. There you have the 
center-bit of her boring-tool. I see the Moths in the 
sand in my test-tubes butting with their heads, jerk- 
ing now in one direction, now in another. They are 
boring into the sand. By the following day they will 
have bored a shaft ten inches long and reached the 
surface. 

When at last the Moth reaches the surface, she 
slowly spreads her bunched wings, extends her an- 
tennae, and puffs out her fleece. She is all dressed 
now, as nicely as she can be. To be sure, she is not 
the most brilliant of our Moths, but she looks very 
well. Her upper wings are gray, striped with a few 
crinkly brown streaks; her under-wings white; throat 
covered with thick gray fur ; abdomen clad in bright- 
russet velvet. The tip end of her body shines like 
pale gold. At first sight it looks bare, but it is not: 
it is covered with tiny scales, so close together that 
they look like one piece. 



i6o INSECT ADVENTURES 

There Is something interesting about these scales. 
However gently we touch them with the point of 
a needle, they fly off in great numbers. This is the 
golden fleece of which the mother robs herself to 
make the nest or muff for her eggs at the base of the 
pine-needles which we spoke of at the beginning of 
the story. 




CHAPTER XIV 

THE CABBAGE-CATERPILLAR 

THE cabbage is the oldest vegetable we possess. 
We know that people In classic times ate It, but 
it goes much further back than that, so that Indeed 
we are Ignorant of when or how mankind first began 
cultivating It. The botanists tell us that originally 
it was a long-stalked, scanty-leaved, Ul-smelllng wild 
plant which grew on ocean cliffs. History pays but 
little attention to such details : It celebrates the battle- 
fields on which we meet our death. It thinks the 
plowed fields by which we thrive are not Impor- 
tant enough to speak of; It can tell us the names of 
kings' favorites, It cannot tell us of the beginning of 
wheat! Perhaps some day It will be written differ- 
ently. 

It Is too bad that we do not know more about the 
cabbage, for It would have some very Interesting 
things to teach us. It Is certainly a treasure In It- 
self. Other creatures think so besides man; and 

i6i 



1 62 INSECT ADVENTURES 

one of these is the Caterpillar of the common Large 
White Butterfly. This Caterpillar feeds on the leaves 
of the cabbage and all kinds of cabbagey plants, 
such as the cauliflower, the Brussels sprout, the kohl- 
rabi, and the rutabaga, all near relatives of the cab- 
bage. 

It will feed also on other plants which belong to 
the cabbage family. They are all of the order of 
the Cruciferae, so-called by the botanists because the 
petals are four in number and arranged in a cross. 
The White Butterfly lays her eggs only on this order 
of plants. How she knows them is a mystery. I 
have studied flowers and plants for fifty years and 
more, yet, if I wished to find out if a plant new to me 
was or was not one of the Cruciferae, and there were 
no flowers or fruit to guide me, I should believe the 
White Butterfly's record on the matter sooner than 
anything I could find in books. 

The White Butterfly has two families a year : one 
in April and May, the other in September. This is 
just the time that cabbages are ripe in our part of 
the world. The Butterfly's calendar agrees with the 
gardener's. When there are provisions to be eaten, 
the Caterpillars are on hand. 

The eggs are a bright orange -yellow and are laid 
in slabs, sometimes on the upper surface, sometimes 
on the lower surface of the leaves. The Caterpillars 



THE CABBAGE-CATERPILLAR 163 



mmmmm- 



come out of their eggs in about a week, and the first 
thing they do is to eat the egg-shells, or egg-wrap- 
pers, before tackling the green leaves. It is the first 
time I have ever seen the grub make a meal of the 
sack in which it was born, and I wonder what reason 
it has. I suspect as follows: the leaves of the cab- 
bage are waxed and slippery. To walk on them with- 
out falling off, the grub needs bits of silk, something 
for Its legs to grip. To make this silk, it needs spe- 
cial food; so it eats the egg-wrapper, which is of a 
horny substance of the same nature as silk, and 
probably easily changed to the latter in the stomach 
of the little grub. 

Soon the grubs get hungry for green food, and 
then the ruin of the cabbages commences. What ap- 
petites they have! I served up to a herd of these 
Caterpillars which I had in my laboratory a bunch 
of leaves picked from among the biggest cabbages: 
two hours later nothing was left but the thick 
middle veins. At this rate the cabbage bed will not 
last long. 

The gluttonous Caterpillars do nothing at all but 
eat, unless we except a curious motion they some- 
times indulge in. When several Caterpillars are 
grazing side by side, you sometimes see all the heads 
in the row briskly lifted and as briskly lowered, time 
after time, all together and as accurately as If they 



1 64 INSECT ADVENTURES 

were Prussian soldiers drilling. I do not know 
whether this Is their way of showing that they would 
fight, If necessary, or a sign of pleasure In the eating 
and the warm sun. Anyhow, It Is the only exercise 
they take until they are full-grown and fat. 

After a whole month of grazing, the Caterpillars 
at last have enough. They begin to climb In every 
direction. They walk about anyhow, with the front 
part of their bodies raised and searching space. It 
Is now the beginning of cold weather^ and my Cater- 
pillar guests are In a small greenhouse. I leave the 
door of the house open. Soon the whole crowd have 
disappeared. 

I find them scattered all over the neighboring 
walls, some thirty yards off. They are under ledges 
and eaves, which will serve them as shelters through 
the winter. The Cabbage-caterpillar Is hardy and 
does not mind the cold. 

In these shelters they weave themselves ham- 
mock cocoons and turn Into chrysales, from which 
next spring the Moths will come. 

We may be Interested In the story of the Cabbage- 
caterpillar, but we know that there would be not 




THE CABBAGE-CATERPILLAR 165 




enough cabbages for us If he were allowed full sway. 
So we are not Ill-pleased to hear that there Is still 
another Insect who preys upon him and keeps him 
from being too numerous. If the Cabbage-caterpil- 
lar Is our enemy, this insect is our friend. Yet she 
is so small, she works so discreetly, that the gardener 
does not know her, has not even heard of her. If 
he were to see her by accident, flitting around the 
plant which she protects, he would take no notice of 
her, would not dream of the help she is giving him. 
I am going to give the tiny midget her deserts. 

Scientists call her by a name as long as she Is tiny. 
Part of the name is MIcrogaster. It Is what I shall 
have to call her, for she has no other that I know of. 
You must blame the wise scientists who named her 
that, and not me. 

How does she work? Well, we shall see. In the 



1 66 INSECT ADVENTURES 

spring, let us look about our kitchen-gardens. We 
can hardly help noticing against the walls or on the 
withered grasses at the foot of the hedges some 
very small yellow cocoons, heaped into masses the 
size of a hazel-nut. Beside each group lies a Cab- 
bage-caterpillar, sometimes dead and always looking 
very tattered. These cocoons are the work of the 
Microgaster's family, hatched or on the point of 
hatching; they have been feeding on the poor Cater- 
pillar. 

The little Microgaster or Midge is about the size 
of a Gnat. When the Caterpillar-moth lays her or- 
ange eggs on the cabbage leaves, the Midge hastens 
up and with a slender, horny prickle she possesses, 
lays her egg inside the film of the Moth's egg. Often 
many Midges lay their little eggs in the same Moth's 
egg. Judging by the cocoons, there are sometimes 
as many as sixty-five Midges to one Caterpillar. 

As the Caterpillar grows up, it does not seem to 
suffer; It feeds on the cabbage leaves and, when that 
is done, makes its pilgrimage as usual to find the place 
where it will weave its cocoon. It even begins this 
work; but it is listless, it has no strength; it grows 
thin and dies. No wonder, with a host of worms 
of the little Microgaster in its body, drinking its 
blood I The Caterpillar has obligingly lived till just 
the time when the Microgaster's worms are ready to 
come out. They do so, and begin to weave their co- 
coons, where they turn into Midges with the long 
name. 










^^4l 



CHAPTER XV 



THE GREAT PEACOCK MOTH 



IT was an evening long to be remembered, when 
the Great Peacock Moths came to my house. 
This Moth Is magnificent, the largest In Europe, clad 
in maroon velvet, with a necktie of white fur. The 
wings are sprinkled with gray and brown, crossed by 
a faint zigzag and edged with smoky white, and 
they have In the center a round patch, a great eye 
with a black pupil and a many-colored iris contain- 
ing black, white, chestnut, and purple arcs. The 
Moth is hatched from a Caterpillar also remark- 
able in appearance, being yellow with beads of tur- 
quoise-blue. It feeds on almond leaves. 

Well, on the morning of the sixth of May, a fe- 
male Great Peacock Moth came out of her cocoon 
In my presence, on the table of my insect-laboratory. 
I at once caged her under a wire-gauze bell-jar. I 
did not think much about the matter. I kept her on 

167 



1 68 INSECT ADVENTURES 

general principles, for I am always on the lookout 
for something to happen. 

I was glad afterwards that I had done so. At 
nine o'clock in the evening, just as the household is 
going to bed, there is a great stir in the room next 
to mine. Little Paul, half-undressed, is rushing 
about, jumping and stamping, knocking the chairs 
over like a mad thing. I hear him call me : 

"Come, quick !" he screams. "Come and see these 
Moths, big as birds ! The room is full of them !" 

I hurry In. The child has not exaggerated very 
much. The room Is full of giant Moths. Four are 
already caught and lodged in a bird-cage. Many 
others are fluttering on the ceiling. 

At this sight, I remember my prisoner of the morn- 
ing. 

"Put on your things, laddie," I say to my son. 
"Leave your cage and come with me. We shall see 
something Interesting." 

We run downstairs to go to my study, which is in 
the right wing of the house. In the kitchen I find 
the servant, who is also bewildered by what Is hap- 
pening and stands flicking her apron at great Moths 
whom she took at first for Bats. It seems that the 
Great Peacock has taken possession of pretty nearly 
every part of the house. 

We enter my study, candle in hand. One of the 
windows had been left open, and what we see Is un- 
forgetable. With a soft flick-flack the great Moths 
fly around the bell-jar, alight, set off again, come 
back, fly up to the celling and down. They rush 



THE GREAT PEACOCK MOTH 169 

at the candle, putting It out with a stroke of their 
wings; they descend on our shoulders, clinging to 
our clothes, grazing our faces. The scene suggests 
a wizard's cave, with Its whirl of Bats. Little Paul 
holds my hand tighter than usual, to keep up his 
courage. 

How many are there ? About twenty In this room. 
Add to these the number who have strayed Into the 
other parts of the house, and the total cannot be 
much short of forty. Forty lovers, who have come 
to pay their respects to the bride born that morning 
— the princess Imprisoned in her tower ! 

Every night that week the Moths come to court 
their princess. It Is stormy weather, so dark one 
can hardly see one's hand before one's face. Our 
house Is difficult for them to reach. It Is hidden by 
tall plane-trees, pines, and cypresses; clusters of 
bushy shrubs make a rampart a few steps away from 
the door. It is through this tangle, in complete dark- 
ness, that the Great Peacock has to tack about to 
reach his lady. 

Under such conditions the Brown Owl would not 
dare leave the hole in his tree. Yet the Moth goes 
forward without hesitating and passes through with- 
out knocking against things. He steers his way so 
skillfully that he arrives In a state of perfect fresh- 
ness, with his big wings unharmed, with not a scratch 
upon him. The darkness Is light enough for him. 

With a view to his wedding, the one and only 
object of his life, the Great Peacock is gifted with a 
wonderful talent. He Is able to discover the object 



170 INSECT ADVENTURES 

of his desire in spite of distance, obstacles, and dark- 
ness. For two or three evenings he is allowed a few 
hours to find his mate. If he cannot find her, all is 
over. He dies. 

The Great Peacock knows nothing of eating. 
While so many other Moths, jolly companions one 
and all, flit from flower to flower, dipping into the 
honeyed cups, he never thinks of refreshment. No 
wonder he does not live long. Two or three even- 
ings, just time enough to allow the couple to meet, 
and that is all ; the big Moth has lived. 




CHAPTER XVI 

THE TRUFFLE-HUNTING BEETLE 

BEFORE we come to the Beetle, I must first tell 
you about my friend, the Dog, who hunts 
truffles, which are underground mushrooms. Dogs 
are quite often used for this purpose, and I have had 
the good fortune on several occasions to go with a 
Dog who was a great expert in this line. He was 
certainly nothing to look at, this artist whom I was 
so anxious to see at work : just a Dog, placid and de- 
liberate in his ways, ugly, unkempt; the sort of Dog 
you would never have at your own fireside. Talent 
and poverty often go hand in hand. 

His master, a celebrated trufile-gatherer in the vil- 
lage, was at first afraid that I wanted to steal his 
secrets and set up a rival business, but when he found 
that I only made drawings of mushrooms and set 
down lists of underground vegetable things, he let 
me join his expeditions. 

171 



172 INSECT ADVENTURES 

It was agreed between us that the Dog should 
act as he pleased and receive a bit of bread as his 
reward after each discovery, no matter whether the 
underground mushroom he discovered was a real 
truffle, the kind people like to eat, or an uneatable 
one. In no case was the master to drive the dog 
away from a spot where experience told him there 
was nothing salable to be found. As far as my 
studies went, I did not care whether the mushrooms 
were edible or not. 

Conducted in this way, the expedition was very 
successful. The busy Dog trotted along with his 
nose to the wind, at a moderate pace. Every little 
while he stopped, questioned the ground with his 
nostrils, scratched for a few seconds, without too 
much excitement, then looked up at his master as if 
to say; 

^'Here we are, here we are! On my word of 
honor as a Dog, there's a truffle here." 

And he spoke the truth. The master dug at the 
spot indicated. If the trowel went astray, the Dog 
showed the man how to put it right by sniffing at 
the bottom of the hole. The mushroom was always 
there. A Dog's nose cannot lie. But he made us 
gather all sorts of underground mushrooms: the 
large and the small, the fresh and the decayed, the 
scented and the unscented, the fragrant and those 
which were the reverse. I was surprised at my col- 
lection, which included most of the underground 
fungi of the neighborhood. 

Is it smell as we understand it that guides the Dog 



THE TRUFFLE-HUNTING BEETLE 173 




in his search? I do not believe that it is, otherwise 
he would not point out so many varieties which smell 
so very different. He must perceive something that 
we cannot. It Is a mistake to compare everything by 
human standards. There are more sensations in the 
world than we know of. Such secrets are known to 
insects better than to other animals, like the Dog or 
the Pig, who also hunts truffles wit^i Its nose. We will 
hear now about the Truffle-hunting Beetle. 

This is a pretty little black Beetle, with a pale and 
velvety belly, round as a cherry-stone and much the 
same size. By rubbing the tip of its abdomen against 
the edge of its wing-cases it makes a soft chirrup like 
that which little birds make when their mother comes 



174 INSECT ADVENTURES 

with their food. The male wears a graceful horn 
on his head. 

I found these Beetles in a certain pine-woods 
where there are plenty of mushrooms. It is a 
pleasant place, where my whole family like to go in 
tlie mild days of autumn. They find everything 
there: old Magpies' nests, made of bundles of twigs; 
Jays squabbling with each other, after filling their 
crops with acorns on the oaks hard by; Rabbits 
suddenly starting out of a rosemary bush, showing 
their little white upturned tails. There is lovely sand 
for the children to dig tunnels in, sand that Is 
easy to build into rows of huts which we thatch with 
moss and top with a bit of reed by way of a chimney. 
xA.nd when we are there we lunch off an apple to 
the sound of the iEolian harps of the breezes softly 
sighing through the pine-needles! 

Yes, for the children it is a real paradise. The 
grown-ups also enjoy it, and one of my chief enjoy- 
ments Is watching my Truffle-beetle. His burrows 
may be seen here and there. The door Is left open 
and surrounded merely by a padding of sand. The 
burrow Is about nine inches deep, going straight 
down In very loose soil. When I cut into it with a 
knife, I often find that it Is empty. The Insect has 
left during the night, having finished Its business 
there and gone to settle elsewhere. The Truffle- 
beetle Is a tramp, a night-walker, who leaves his 
home whenever he feels like It and easily gets a new 
one. Sometimes I do find the insect at the bottom 
of the pit, always alone, sometimes a male, some- 



THE TRUFFLE-HUNTING BEETLE 175 

times a female, never two at the same time. The 
burrow is not a house for the family; it is a sort of 
bachelor house, dug for comfort only for the solitary 
Beetle. 

The Beetle in this house is clutching a small mush- 
room, usually partly eaten. He will not part from 
it. It is his treasure, his worldly goods. Scattered 
crumbs tell us that we have caught him feasting. 

When we take his prize away from him we find 
that it is a sort of little underground mushroom, 
closely related to the truffle. 

This throws a light upon the habits of the Beetle 
and his reason for making new burrows so often. In 
the calm of the twilight, the little gadabout takes to 
the fields, chirruping softly as he goes, cheering him- 
self with song. He explores the soil, questions it 
as to its contents, just as the Dog does when hunting 
for truffles. His sense of smell tells him when the 
coveted morsel is underneath, covered by a few 
inches of sand. Certain of the exact spot where the 
thing lies, he digs straight down and never fails to 
reach it. As long as the provisions last, he does not 
go out again. Blissfully he feeds at the bottom of 
the well he has dug to reach the mushroom. He 
does not care whether his door is open or not. 

When he has eaten all his food, he moves, look- 
ing for more, and to find it he digs a new burrow, 
which will be given up in its turn. Thus he spends 
all autumn and the next spring, the seasons for mush- 
rooms, traveling from one of his little hotels to an- 
other. 



176 INSECT ADVENTURES 

This truffle which the Beetle hunts appears to have 
no particular odor. How, then, can he detect it 
from the ground over the place where it is buried? 
He is a clever Beetle, and we do not know yet just 
how he manages it. 




CHAPTER XVII 

THE BOY WHO LOVED INSECTS 

NOWADAYS, people lay everything to heredity; 
that is, they say that human beings and ani- 
mals both receive their special talents from their 
ancestors, who have perhaps been developing them 
through many generations. I do not altogether 
agree with this theory. I am going to tell you my 
own story to show that I did not inherit my passion 
for insects from any of my ancestors. 

Neither my grandfather nor my grandmother on 
my mother's side cared in the least about insects. I 
did not know my grandfather, but I know that he had 
a hard time making a living, and I am sure the only 
attention he paid to an insect, if he met it, was to 
crush it under his foot. Grandmother, who could 
not even read, certainly cared nothing about science 
or insects. If, sometimes, when rinsing her salad at 
the tap, she found a Caterpillar on the lettuce leaves, 

177 



178 INSECT ADVENTURES 

with a start of fright she would fling the loathsome 
thing away. 

My other grandparents, my father's father and 
mother, I knew well. Indeed, I went to live with 
them when I was five or six years old, because my 
father and mother were too poor to take care of me. 
These grandparents lived on a poverty-stricken farm 
away out in the country. They did not know how to 
read; they had never opened a book In their lives. 
Grandfather knew a great deal about cows and 
sheep, but nothing about anything else. How dum- 
founded he would have been to learn that, in the 
distant future, one of his family would spend his 
time studying Insignificant Insects ! If he had guessed 
that that lunatic was myself, seated at the table by 
his side, what a smack I should have caught in the 
neck! 

"The idea of wasting one's time with that non- 
sense !" he would have thundered. 

Grandmother, dear soul, was too busy with wash- 
ing the clothes, minding the children, seeing to the 
meals of the household, spinning, attending to the 
chickens, curds and whey, butter, and pickles, to 
think of anything else. Sometimes, in the evenings, 
she used to tell us stories, as we sat around the fire, 
about the Wolf who lived on the moors. I should 
have very much liked to see this Wolf, the hero of 
so many tales that made our flesh creep, but I never 
did. I owe a great deal to you, dear grandmother; 
It was In your lap that I found consolation for my 
first sorrows. You have handed down to me, per- 



THE BOY WHO LOVED INSECTS 179 

haps, a little of your physical vigor, a little of your 
love for work; but certainly you did not give me 
my love for insects. 

Nor did either of my own parents. My mother 
was quite illiterate ; my father had been to school as 
a child, he knew how to read and write a little, but 
he was too busy making a living to have room for 
any other cares. A good cuff or two when he saw 
me pinning an insect to a cork was all the encourage- 
ment I received from him. 

And yet I began to observe, to inquire Into things, 
when I was still almost a baby. My first memories 
of this tendency will amuse you. One day when I 
was five or six years old I was standing on the moor 
in front of our farm, clad In a soiled frieze frock 
flapping against my bare heels: I remember the 
handkerchief hanging from my waist by a bit of 
string, — a handkerchief, I am sorry to say, often 
lost and replaced by the back of my sleeve. 

My face was turned toward the sun. The dazzling 
splendor fascinated me. No Moth was ever more 
attracted by the light of the lamp. As I stood there, 
I was asking myself a question. With what was I 
enjoying the glorious radiance, with my mouth or 
my eyes? Reader, do not smile: this was true scien- 
tific curiosity. I opened my mouth wide and closed 
my eyes: the glory disappeared. I opened my eyes 
and shut my mouth : the glory reappeared. I re- 
peated the performance, with the same result. The 
question was solved: I had learned by deduction that 
I see the sun with my eyes. Oh, what a discovery! 



I«0 



INSECT ADVENTURES 













That evening, I told the whole house about It. Grand- 
mother smiled lovingly at my simplicity: the others 
laughed at it. 

Another find. At nightfall, amidst the neighbor- 
ing bushes, a sort of jingle attracted my attention, 
sounding very faintly and softly through the even- 
ing silence. Who Is making that noise ? Is It a little 
Bird chirping in his nest? We must look Into the 
matter and that quickly. True, there is a Wolf, who 
comes out of the woods at this time, so they tell me. 
Let's go all the same, but not too far: just there, 
behind that clump of gloom. 

I stand on the lookout for long, but all In vain. 



THE BOY WHO LOVED INSECTS i8i 

At the faintest sound of movement in the brushwood, 
the jingle ceases. I try again next day and the day 
after. This time, my stubborn watch succeeds. 
Whoosh ! A grab of my hand and I hold the singer. 
It is not a Bird; it is a kind of Grasshopper whose 
hind-legs my playfellows have taught me to like; a 
poor reward for my long hiding. The best part of 
the business is not the two haunches with the shrimpy 
flavor, but what I have just learned. I now know, 
from personal observation, that the Grasshopper 
sings. I did not tell of my discovery, for fear of 
the same laughter that had greeted my story about 
the sun. 

Oh, what pretty flowers, in a field close to the 
house ! They seem to smile at me with their great 
violet eyes. Later on, I see. In their place, bunches 
of big red cherries. I taste them. They are not 
nice and they have no stones. What can those cher- 
ries be? At the end of the summer, grandfather 
comes with a spade and turns my field topsy-turvy. 
From underground there comes, by the basketful 
and sackful, a sort of round root. I know that root; 
It abounds In the house; time after time I have 
cooked It In the peat-stove. It is the potato. Its 
violet flower and its red fruit are pigeonholed for 
good and all In my memory. 

With an ever-watchful eye for animals and plants, 
the future observer, the little six-year-old monkey, 
practiced by himself, all unawares. He went to the 
flower, he went to the Insect, even as the Large 
White Butterfly goes to the cabbage and the Red Ad- 



1 82 INSECT ADVENTURES 

miral to the thistle. He looked and inquired, drawn 
by a curiosity whereof heredity did not know the 
secret. 

A little later on I am back In the village, in my 
father's house. I am now seven years old; and it 
Is high time that I went to school. Nothing could 
have turned out better; the master Is my godfather. 
What shall I call the room In which I was to become 
acquainted with the alphabet? It would be difficult 
to find the exact word, because the room served for 
every purpose. It was at once a school, a kitchen, 
a bedroom, a dining-room and, at times, a chicken- 
house and a piggery. Palatial schools were not 
dreamed of In those days; any wretched hovel was 
thought good enough. 

A broad fixed ladder led to the floor above. Un- 
der the ladder stood a big bed in a boarded recess. 
What was there upstairs? I never quite knew. I 
would see the master sometimes bring down an arm- 
ful of hay for the Ass, sometimes a basket of pota- 
toes which the housewife emptied Into the pot In 
which the little porkers' food was cooked. It must 
have been a sort of loft, a storehouse of provisions 
for man and beast. Those two rooms were all there 
were In the whole dwelling. 

To return to the lower one, the schoolroom: a 
window faces south, the only window In the house, 
a low, narrow window whose frame you can touch at 
the same time with your head and both your shoul- 
ders. This sunny opening Is the only lively spot in 
the dwelling; It overlooks the greater part of the 




"The fire was not exactly lit for us;" 



1 84 INSECT ADVENTURES 

village, which straggles along the slopes of a slant- 
ing valley. In the window-recess is the master's little 
table. 

The opposite wall contains a niche In which stands 
a gleaming copper pail full of water. Here the 
parched children can relieve their thirst when they 
please, with a cup left within their reach. At the 
top of the niche are a few shelves bright with pewter 
plates, dishes, and drinklng-vessels, which are taken 
down from their sanctuary on great occasions only. 

More or less everywhere, at any spot which the 
light touches, are crudely colored pictures pasted on 
the walls. Against the far wall stands the large 
fireplace. In the middle is the hearth, but, on the 
right and left, are two breast-high recesses, half 
wood and half stone. Each of them Is a bed, with a 
mattress stuffed with chaff of winnowed corn. Two 
sliding planks serve as shutters and close the chest if 
the sleeper would be alone. These beds are used 
by the favored ones of the house, the two boarders. 
They must lie snug in there at night, with their shut- 
ters closed, when the north wind howls at the mouth 
of the dark valley and sends the snow awhirl. The 
rest is occupied by the hearth and its accessories : the 
three-legged stools ; the salt-box, hanging against the 
wall to keep its contents dry; the heavy shovel which 
it takes two hands to wield; lastly, the bellows like 
those with which I used to blow out my cheeks in 
grandfather's house. They are made of a mighty 
branch of pine, hollowed throughout its length with 
a red-hot Iron. One blows through this channel. 



THE BOY WHO LOVED INSECTS 185 

With a couple of stones for supports, the master's 
bundle of sticks and our own logs blaze and flicker, 
each of us having to bring a log of wood in the 
morning, if he would share in the treat. 

For that matter, the fire was not exactly lit for 
us, but, above all, to warm a row of three pots in 
which simmered the Pigs' food, a mixture of pota- 
toes and bran. That, in spite of our each giving a 
log, was the real object of the brushwood-fire. The 
two boarders, on their stools, in the best places, and 
we others sitting on our heels, formed a semicircle 
around those big kettles, full to the brim and giving 
off little jets of steam, with puff-puff-puffing sounds. 
The bolder among us, when the master was not 
looking, would dig a knife into a well-cooked potato 
and add it to their bit of bread; for I must say that, 
if we did little work in my school, at least we did a 
deal of eating. It was the regular custom to crack 
a few nuts and nibble at a crust while writing our 
page or setting out our rows of figures. 

We, the smaller ones, in addition to the comfort 
of studying with our mouths full, had every now and 
then two other delights, which were quite as good 
as cracking nuts. The back-door gave upon the 
yard where the Hen, surrounded by her brood of 
Chicks, scratched, while the little Pigs, of whom 
there were a dozen, wallowed in their stone trough. 
This door would open sometimes to let one of us 
out, a privilege which we abused, for the sly ones 
among us were careful not to close it on returning. 
Forthwith, the porkers would come running in, one 



i86 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




after the other, attracted by the smell of the boiled 
potatoes. My bench, the one where the youngsters 
sat, stood against the wall, under the copper pail, 
and was right in the way of the Pigs. Up they came 
trotting and grunting, curling their little tails; they 
rubbed against our legs ; they poked their cold pink 
snouts into our hands in search of a scrap of crust; 



THE BOY WHO LOVED INSECTS 187 

they questioned us with their sharp little eyes to learn 
if we happened to have a dry chestnut for them in 
our pockets. When they had gone the round, some 
this way and some that, they went back to the farm- 
yard, driven away by a friendly flick of the master's 
handkerchief. 

Next came the visit of the Hen, bringing her 
velvet-coated Chicks to see us. All of us eagerly 
crumbled a little bread for our pretty visitors. We 
vied with one another In calling them to us and 
tickling with our fingers their soft and downy backs. 

What could we learn in such a school as that! 
Each of the younger pupils had, or rather was sup- 
posed to have, in his hands a little penny book, the 
alphabet, printed on gray paper. It began, on the 
cover, with a Pigeon, or something like it. Next 
came a cross, with the letters In their order. But, 
If the little book was to be of any use, the master 
should have shown us something about it. For 
this, the worthy man, too much taken up with the 
big ones, had not the time. He gave us the book 
only to make us look like scholars. We were to 
study It on our bench, to decipher it with the help 
of our next neighbor, in case he might know one or 
two of the letters. Our studying came to nothing, 
being every moment disturbed by a visit to the po- 
tatoes In the stew-pots, a quarrel among playmates 
about a marble, the grunting Invasion of the little 
Pigs or the arrival of the Chicks. 

The big ones used to write. They had the bene- 
fit of the small amount of light in the room, by the 



1 88 INSECT ADVENTURES 

narrow window, and of the large and only table 
with its circle of seats. The school supplied noth- 
ing, not even a drop of ink; every one had to come 
with a full set of utensils. The inkhorn of those days 
was a long cardboard box divided into two parts. 
The upper compartment held the pens, made of 
goose- or turkey-quill trimmed with a penknife; the 
lower contained, in a tiny well, ink made of soot 
mixed with vinegar. 

The master's great business was to mend the pens 
— and then to trace at the head of the white page a 
line of strokes, single letters, or words, according to 
the scholar's capabilities. When that is over keep 
an eye on the work of art which is coming to adorn 
the copy ! With what undulating movements of the 
wrist does the master's hand, resting on the little 
finger, prepare and plan its flight ! All at once the 
hand starts off, flies, whirls; and lo and behold, un- 
der the line of writing is unfurled a garland of 
circles, spirals, and flourishes, framing a bird with 
outspread wings, the whole, if you please, in red 
ink, the only kind worthy of such a pen. Large and 
small, we stood awestruck in the presence of these 
marvels. 

W^hat was read at my school? At most, in French, 
a few selections from sacred history. Latin came 
oftener, to teach us to sing vespers properly. 

And history, geography? No one ever heard of 
them. What difference did It make to us whether 
the earth was round or square ! In either case, it was 
just as hard to make It bring forth anything. 



THE BOY WHO LOVED INSECTS 189 

And grammar? The master troubled his head 
very little about that; and we still less. And arith- 
metic? Yes, we did a little of this, but not under 
that learned name. We called it sums. On Satur- 
day evening, to finish up the week, there was a gen- 
eral orgy of sums. The top boys stood up and, in a 
loud voice, recited the multiplication table up to 
twelve times. When this recital was over, the whole 
class, the little ones included, took it up in chorus, 
creating such an uproar that Chicks and porkers 
took to flight if they happened to be there. 

When all Is said, our master was an excellent man 
who could have kept school very well but for his 
lack of one thing; and that was time. He managed 
the property of an absentee landlord. He had un- 
der his care an old castle with four towers, which had 
become so many pigeon-houses; he directed the get- 
ting-in of the hay, the walnuts, the apples and the 
oats. We used to help him during the summer. Les- 
sons at that time were less dull. They were often 
given on the hay or on the straw; oftener still, les- 
son-time was spent in cleaning out the dove-cot or 
stamping on the Snails that had sallied In rainy 
weather from their fortresses, the tall box borders 
of the garden belonging to the castle. 

Our master was a barber. With his light hand, 
which was so clever at beautifying our copies with 
curlicue birds, he shaved the notabilities of the 
place: the mayor, the parish-priest, the notary. Our 
master was a bell-ringer. A wedding or a christen- 
ing interrupted the lessons ; he had to ring a peal. A 



I90 INSECT ADVENTURES 

gathering storm gave us a holiday; the great bell 
must be tolled to ward off the lightning and the hail. 
Our master was a choir-singer. Our master wound 
up and regulated the village-clock. This was his 
proudest duty. Giving a glance at the sun, to tell 
the time more or less nearly, he would climb to the 
top of the steeple, open a huge cage of rafters and 
find himself in a maze of wheels and springs whereof 
the secret was known to him alone. 

With such a school and such a master and such 
examples, what will become of my natural tastes, as 
yet so undeveloped? In those surroundings, they 
seem bound to perish, stifled forever. Yet no, the 
germ has life; It works in my veins, never to leave 
them again. It finds food everywhere, down to the 
cover of my penny alphabet, beautified with a crude 
picture of a Pigeon which I study much more 
eagerly than the ABC. Its round eye, with its 
circlet of dots, seems to smile upon me. Its wing, of 
which I count the feathers one by one, tells me of 
flights on high, among the beautiful clouds; it carries 
me to the beeches raising their smooth trunks above 
a mossy carpet studded with white mushrooms 
that look like eggs, dropped by some wandering hen; 
it takes me to the snow-clad peaks where the birds 
leave the starry print of their red feet. He is a 
Rne fellow, my Pigeon-friend; he consoles me for the 
woes hidden behind the cover of my book. Thanks 
to him, I sit quietly on my bench and wait more or 
less till school is over. 

School out-of-doors has other charms. When the 



THE BOY WHO LOVED INSECTS 191 

master takes us to kill the Snails in the box borders, 
I do not always do so. My heel sometimes hesitates 
before coming down upon the handful which I have 
gathered. They are so pretty! Just think, there 
are yellow ones and pink, white ones and brown, all 
with dark spiral streaks. I fill my pockets with the 
handsomest, so as to feast my eyes on them at my 
leisure. 

On hay-making days in the master's field, I strike 
up an acquaintance with the Frog. Flayed and stuck 
at the end of a split stick, he serves as bait to tempt 
the Crayfish to come out of his retreat by the brook- 




192 INSECT ADVENTURES 

side. On the alder-trees I catch the Hoplia, the 
splendid Beetle who pales the azure of the heavens. 
I pick the narcissus and learn to gather, with the tip 
of my tongue, the tiny drop of honey that lies right 
at the bottom of the cleft corolla. I also learn that 
too-long indulgence in this feast brings a headache; 
but this discomfort in no way impairs my admira- 
tion for the glorious white flower, which wears a 
narrow red collar at the throat of its funnel. 

When we go to beat the walnut-trees, the barren 
grass-plots provide me with Locusts spreading their 
wings, some into a blue fan, others into a red. And 
thus the country school, even in the heart of winter, 
furnished continuous food for my interest in things. 
My passion for animals and plants made progress 
of itself. 

What did not make progress was my acquaint- 
ance with my letters, greatly neglected in favor 
of the Pigeon. I was still at the same stage, 
hopelessly behindhand with the alphabet, when 
my father, by a chance inspiration, brought me 
home from the town what was to give me a start 
along the road of reading. It was a large print, 
price three cents, coloreli and divided into compart- 
ments in which animals of all sorts taught the ABC 
by means of the first letters of their names. You 
began with the sacred beast, the Donkey, whose 
name, Ane, with a big initial, taught me the letter A. 
The Bcsuf^ the Ox, stood for B; the Canard, the 
Duck, told me about C; the Dindon, the Turkey, 
gave me the letter D. And so on with the rest. A 



THE BOY WHO LOVED INSECTS 193 

few compartments, it is true, were lacking in clear- 
ness. I had no friendly feeling for the Hippopota- 
mus, the Kamichi, or Horned Screamer, and the 
Zebu, who aimed at making me say H, K, and Z. 
No matter; father came to my aid in hard cases; and 
I made such rapid progress that, in a few days, I 
was able to turn in good earnest the pages of my lit- 
tle Pigeon-book, hitherto so undecipherable. I was 
initiated; I knew how to spell. My parents mar- 
veled. I can explain this unexpected progress to- 
day. Those speaking pictures, which brought me 
amongst my friends the beasts, were in harmony 
with my tastes. I have the animals to thank for 
teaching me to read. Animals forever! 

Luck favored me a second time. As a reward for 
learning to read, I was given La Fontaine's Fables, 
In a popular, cheap edition, crammed with pictures, 
small, I admit, and very inaccurate, but still delight- 
ful. Here were the Crow, the Fox, the Wolf, the 
Magpie, the Frog, the Rabbit, the Donkey, the Dog, 
the Cat; all persons of my acquaintance. The glori- 
ous book was immensely to my taste, with its skimpy 
illustrations in which the animals walked and talked. 
As to understanding what it said, that was another 
story ! Never mind, my lad ! Put together syllables 
that say nothing to you as yet; they will speak to you 
later and La Fontaine will always remain your 
friend. 

I come to the time when I was ten years old and 
at Rodez College. I was well thought of in the 
school, for I cut a good figure in composition and 



194 INSECT ADVENTURES 

translation. In that classical atmosphere, there was 
talk of Procas, King of Alba, and of his two sons, 
Numitor and Amulius. We heard of Cynoegirus, the 
strong-jawed man, who, having lost his two hands in 
battle, seized and held a Persian galley with his 
teeth, and of Cadmus the Phoenician, who sowed a 
dragon's teeth as though they were beans and gath- 
ered his harvest in the shape of a host of armed men, 
who killed one another as they rose up from the 
ground. The only one who survived the slaughter 
was one as tough as leather, presumably the son of 
the big back grinder-tooth. 

Had they talked to me about the man in the moon, 
I could not have been more startled. I made up for 
it with my animals. While admiring Cadmus and 
Cynoegirus, I hardly ever failed, on Sundays and 
Thursdays, to go and see if the cowslip or the yellow 
daffodil was making its appearance in the meadows, 
if the Linnet was hatching on the juniper-bushes, if 
the Cockchafers were plopping down from the wind- 
shaken poplars. 

By easy stages I came to Virgil and was very 
much smitten with Meliboeus, Corydon, Menalcas, 
Damoetas and the rest of them. Within the frame 
in which the characters moved were exquisite details 
concerning the Bee, the Cicada, the Turtle-dove, 
the Crow, the Nanny-goat, and the golden broom. A 
real delight were these stories of the fields, sung in 
sonorous verse ; and the Latin poet left a lasting im- 
pression on my classical recollections. 

Then, suddenly, good-by to my studies, good-by 



THE BOY WHO LOVED INSECTS 195 









to Tityrus and Menalcas. Ill-luck is swooping down 
on us, relentlessly. Hunger threatens us at home. 
And now, boy, put your trust in God ; run about and 
earn your penn'orth of potatoes as best you can. 
Life is about to become a hideous inferno. Let us 
pass quickly over this phase. 

During this sad time, my love for the insects 
ought to have gone under. Not at all. I still remem- 
ber a certain Pine Cockchafer met for the first time. 
The plumes on her antennae, her pretty pattern of 
white spots on a dark-brown ground, were as a ray 
of sunshine in the gloomy wretchedness of the day. 

To cut a long story short: good fortune, which 
never abandons the brave, brought me to the pri- 
mary normal school at Vaucluse, where I was cer- 
tain of food: dried chestnuts and chick-peas. The 
principal, a man of broad views, soon came to trust 
his new assistant. He left me practically a free 
hand so long as I satisfied the school curriculum, 
which was very modest in those days. I was a little 
ahead of my fellow-pupils. I took advantage of this 



196 INSECT ADVENTURES 

to get some order into my vague knowledge of plants 
and animals. While a dictation lesson was being cor- 
rected around me, I would examine, in the recesses 
of my desk, the oleander's fruit, the snap-dragon's 
seed-vessel, the Wasp's sting and the Ground-beetle's 
wing-case. 

With this foretaste of natural science, picked up 
haphazard and secretly, I left school more deeply In 
love than ever with insects and flowers. And yet I 
had to give it all up. Natural history could not bring 
me anywhere. The schoolmasters of the time de- 
spised it; Latin, Greek, and mathematics were the 
subjects to study. 

So I flung myself with might and main into higher 
mathematics: a hard battle, if ever there was one, 
without teachers, face to face for days on end with 
abstruse problems. Next I studied the physical 
sciences in the same manner, with an impossible lab- 
oratory, the work of my own hands. I went against 
my feelings: I buried my natural-history books at 
the bottom of my trunk. 

And so, in the end, I am sent to teach physics and 
chemistry at Ajaccio College. This time, the temp- 
tation is too much for me. The sea, with Its won- 
ders, the beach, covered with beautiful shells, the 
myrtles, arbutus, and other trees; all this paradise 
of gorgeous nature is more attractive than geometry 
and trigonometry. I give up. I divide my spare time 
into two parts. The larger part Is devoted to mathe- 
matics, by which I expect to make my way In the 



THE BOY WHO LOVED INSECTS 197 

world; the other Is spent, v/Ith much misgiving, in 
botanizing and looking for the treasures of the sea. 

We never know what will happen to us. Mathe- 
matics, on which I spent so much time In my youth, 
has been of hardly any good to me; and animals, 
which I avoided as much as ever I could, are the 
consolation of my old age. 

I met two famous scientists in Ajaccio: Requien, a 
well-known botanist, and Moquln-Tandom, who gave 
me my first lesson in natural history. He stayed at 
my house, as the hotel was full. The day before he 
left he said to me : 

"You interest yourself In shells. That Is some- 
thing, but It Is not enough. You must look Into the 
animal itself. I will show you how It's done." 

He took a sharp pair of scissors from the family 
work-basket and a couple of needles, and showed me 
the anatomy of a snail In a soup-plate filled with 
water. Gradually he explained and sketched the or- 
gans which he spread before my eyes. This was 
the only, the never-to-be-forgotten lesson in natural 
history that I ever received In my life. 

It is time to finish this story about myself. It 
shows that from early childhood I have felt drawn 
towards the things of nature. I have the gift of ob- 
servation. Why and how? I do not know. 

We have all of us, men and animals, some special 
gift. One child takes to music, another is always 
modeling things out of clay; another Is quick at fig- 
ures. It Is the same way with Insects. One kind of 
Bee can cut leaves; another builds clay houses, Spi- 



198 INSECT ADVENTURES 

ders know how to make webs. These gifts exist be- 
cause they exist, and that is all any one can say. lA 
human beings, we call the special gift genius. In an 
insect, we call it instinct. Instinct is the animal's 
genius. 




CHAPTER XVIII 



THE BANDED SPIDER 



IN the disagreeable season of the year, when the 
insect has nothing to do and retires to winter 
quarters, an observer who looks in the sunny nooks, 
grubs in the sand, lifts the stones, or searches the 
brushwood, will often find something very interest- 
ing, a real work of art. Happy are they who can 
appreciate such treasures! I wish them all the joys 
they have brought me and will continue to bring me, 
in spite of the vexations of life, which grow ever 
more bitter as the years follow their swift downward 
course. 

Should the seekers rummage among the wild 
grasses in the willow-beds and thickets, I wish them 
the delight of finding the wonderful object that, at 
this moment, lies before my eyes. It is the work of 
a Spider, the nest of the Banded Spider. 

In bearing and coloring, this Spider is among the 
handsomest that I know. On her fat body, nearly 

199 



200 INSECT ADVENTURES 

as large as a hazel-nut, are alternate yellow, black, 
and silver sashes, to which she owes her name of 
Banded. Her eight long legs, with their dark-brown 
and pale-brown rings, surround her body like the 
spokes of a wheel. 

Any small prey suits her; and, as long as she can 
find supports for her web, she settles wherever the 
Locust hops, wherever the Fly hovers, wherever the 
Dragon-fly dances or the Butterfly flits. Usually, be- 
cause of the greater abundance of game there, she 
spreads her web across some brooklet, from bank to 
bank, among the rushes. She also stretches It 
sometimes in the thickets of evergreen oak, on the 
slopes with the scrubby grass, dear to Grasshoppers. 

Her hunting-weapon is a large upright web, whose 
outer boundary Is fastened to the neighboring 
branches by a number of moorings. Her web Is like 
that of the other weaving Spiders, Straight threads 
run out like spokes of a wheel from a central point. 
Over these runs a continuous spiral thread, forming 
chords, or cross-bars, from the center to the circum- 
ference. It Is magnificently large and magnificently 
symmetrical. 

In the lower part of the web, starting from the 
center, a thick wide ribbon descends zigzag-wise 
across the spokes. This is the Spider's trademark, 
the way she signs her work of art. Also, the strong 
silk zigzag gives greater firmness to the web. 

The net needs to be firm to hold the heavy In- 
sects that light on It. The Spider cannot picic and 
choose her prizes. Seated motionless In the center 



THE BANDED SPIDER 



201 



of the web, her eight legs widespread to feel the 
shaking of the network in any direction, she waits 
for what luck will bring her: sometimes some giddy- 
weak thing unable to control its flight, sometimes 
some powerful prey rushing headlong with a reck- 
less bound. 

The Locust in particular, the fiery Locust, who 
releases the spring of his long shanks at random, 
often falls Into the trap. One Imagines that his 
strength ought to frighten the Spider; the kick of his 
spurred legs should enable him to make a hole then 
and there In the web and to get away. But not 
at all. If he does not free himself at the first effort, 
the Locust is lost. 







202 INSECT ADVENTURES 

Turning her back on the game, the Banded Spider 
works all her spinnerets — the spinneret is the organ 
with which she makes her silk, and is pierced with 
tiny holes like the mouth of a watering-pot — at one 
and the same time. She gathers the silky spray with 
her hind-legs, which are longer than the others and 
open wide apart to allow the silk to spread. In this 
way the Spider obtains not a thread but a rainbow- 
colored sheet, a sort of clouded fan wherein the 
threads are kept almost separate. Her two hind- 
legs fling this sheet, or shroud, by rapid alternate 
armfuls, while, at the same time, they turn the Lo- 
cust over and over, swathing it completely. 

The gladiator of old times, when forced to fight 
against powerful wild beasts, appeared in the ring 
with a rope-net folded over his left shoulder. The 
animal made its spring. The man, with a sudden 
movement of his right arm, cast the net as a fisher- 
man does; he covered the beast and tangled it In 
the meshes. A thrust of the trident, or three-pronged 
spear, gave the finishing touch to the vanquished 
foe. 

The Spider works in the same way, with this ad- 
vantage, that she can renew her armful of fetters. 
If the first Is not enough, a second Instantly follows, 
and another and yet another until she has used up all 
her silk. 

When all movement ceases under the snowy wind- 
ing-sheet, the Spider goes up to her bound prisoner. 
She has a better weapon than the gladiator's three- 
pronged spear : she has her poison-fangs. She gnaws 



THE BANDED SPIDER 



203 



at the Locust. When she has finished, she flings the 
clean-bled remains out of the net and returns to her 
waiting-place in the centre of the web. 




THE NEST 



The Spiders show their great talents even better 
in the business of motherhood than in their hunting. 
The silk bag, the nest, in which the Banded Spider 
houses her eggs, is a much greater marvel than the 
bird's nest. In shape it is a balloon turned upside 
down, nearly the size of a pigeon's egg. The top 
tapers like a pear and is cut short and crowned with 
a scalloped rim, the corners of which are lengthened 
by means of moorings that fasten the nest to the 
near-by twigs. The whole, a graceful egg-shaped 
object, hangs straight down among a few threads 
that steady it. 

The top of the Spider's nest is hollowed into a 
bowl closed with a silky padding. Covering all the 
rest of the nest is a wrapper of thick, compact white 



204 INSECT ADVENTURES 

satin, adorned with ribbons and patterns of brown 
and even black silk. We know at once the use of 
this satin wrapper; it is a waterproof cover which 
neither dew nor rain can penetrate. 

The Spider's nest, down among the dead grasses, 
close to the ground, must protect its contents from 
the winter cold. Let us cut the wrapper with our 
scissors. Underneath, we find a thick layer of red- 
dish-brown silk, not worked into a fabric this time, 
but puffed Into an extra-line wadding. This is a com- 
forter, a quilt, for the Spider's babies, softer than 
any swan's down and warm as toast. 

In the middle of this quilt hangs a cylindrical 
pocket, round at the bottom, cut square at the top 
and closed with a padded lid. It is made of ex- 
tremely fine satin; it holds the Spider's eggs, pretty 
little orange-colored beads, which, glued together, 
form a little globe the size of a pea. These are the 
treasures which must be guarded against the 
weather. 

When the Spider is making her pouch she moves 
slowly round and round, paying out a single thread. 
The hind-legs draw it out and place it In position 
on that which is already done. Thus is formed the 
satin bag. Guy-ropes bind it to the nearest threads 
and keep it stretched, especially at the mouth. The 
bag is just large enough to hold all the eggs, without 
any room left over. 

When the Spider has laid her eggs, she begins to 
work her spinneret once more, but in a different 
manner. Her body sinks and touches a point, goes 



THE BANDED SPIDER 



205 



back, sinks again and touches another point, first 
here, then there, making confused zigzags. At the 
same time, the hind-legs tread the material given 
out. The result Is not a woven cloth, but a sort of 
felt, a blanketing. 

To make the elder-down quilt, she turns out red- 
dish-brown silk, finer than the other and coming out 
In clouds which she beats Into a sort of froth with 
her hind-legs. The egg-pocket disappears, drowned 
in this exquisite wadding. 




2o6 INSECT ADVENTURES 

Again she changes her material, making the white 
silk of the outer wrapper. Already the bag has 
taken its balloon shape, tapering towards the neck. 
She now decorates the nest with brown markings, 
making for this purpose still a different kind of silk, 
varying in color from russet to black. When this 
is done, the work is finished. 

What a wonderful silk-factory the Spider runs ! 
With a very simple and never-varying plant, con- 
sisting of her own hind-legs and spinnerets, she pro- 
duces, by turns, rope-maker's, spinner's, weaver's, 
ribbon-maker's and felt-maker's work. How does 
she do it? How can she obtain, as she wishes, skeins 
of different colors and grades? How does she turn 
them out, first in this fashion, then in that? I see 
the results, but I do not understand the machinery 
and still less the process. It beats me altogether. 

When the Spider has finished her nest, she moves 
away with slow strides, without giving a glance at 
the bag. The rest does not interest her: time and 
the sun will hatch the eggs. By weaving the house 
for her children she has used up all her silk. If 
she returned to her web now, she would not have 
any with which to bind her prey. Besides, she no 
longer has any appetite. Withered and languid, she 
drags out her existence for a few days and, at last, 
dies. This is how things happen when I keep the 
Spiders in my cages; this is how they must happen 
in the brushwood. 



THE BANDED SPIDER 207 



THE BANDED SPIDER^S FAMILY 



The pretty orange-yellow eggs of the Banded 
Spider number above five hundred. They are In- 
closed, you will remember, in a white-satin nest, in 
which there is no opening of any kind. How will 
the little Spiders get out, when their time comes 
and their mother is not there to help them? 

The animal and vegetable kingdoms are some- 
times very much alike. The Spider's nest seems to 
me like an animal fruit, which holds eggs instead of 
seeds. Now seeds have all sorts of ways of scat- 
tering. The fruit of the garden balsam, when ripe, 
splits, at the least touch, into five fleshy valves, which 
curl up and shoot their seeds to a distance. You all 
know the jewel-weeds, or touch-me-nots, along the 
wayside, whose seed pods explode when you touch 
them. Then there are light seeds, like the dande- 
lion, which have tufts or plumes to carry them away. 
The "keys" of the elm are formed of a broad, light 
fan with the seed cased in the center; those of the 
maple are joined in pairs and are like the unfurled 
wings of a bird; those of the ash, carved like the 
blade of an oar, perform the most distant journeys 
when driven before the storm. Like the plant, the 
insect also sometimes has ways of shooting its large 
families out into the world. You will notice this 
in the case of many Spiders, and particularly this 
Banded Spider. 

As March comes on the Spiders begin to hatch out 



2o8 INSECT ADVENTURES 

inside the nest. If ¥/e cut it open with the scissors 
we shall find some scattered over the eider-down out- 
side the center room, and some still in the orange 
eggs. The little Spiders have not got their beau- 
tiful banded dresses yet; they are pale yellow on 
top, with black-rimmed eyes, and white and brown 
underneath. They stay in the outer room of the 
nest for four months, during which time their bodies 
harden and they grow mature. 

When June and July come, they are anxious to be 
off, but they cannot make a hole in the tough fab- 
ric of the nest. Never mind, the nest will open of 
itself, like a ripe seed-pod. Some day, when the 
sun is very hot, the satin bursts. Some of the Spider- 
lings, all mixed up with their flossy mattress, shoot 
out of the balloon. They are in frantic commo- 
tion. Others stay inside the nest and come out in 
their own good time. But as they come out, all 
of them climb up the near-by twigs and send out 
little threads which float, break, and fly away, car- 
rying the tiny Spiders with them. You shall hear 
more about these flying machines of the young 
Spiders in the next chapters. 




CHAPTER XIX 

THE TARANTULA 

THE Spider has a bad name: most of us think 
her a horrid animal, and hasten to crush her 
under our feet. Nevertheless, any one who observes 
her knows that she is a hard worker, a talented 
weaver, a wily huntress, and very interesting in other 
ways. Yes, the Spider is well worth studying, apart 
from any scientific reasons; but she Is said to be 
poisonous, and that is her crime and the main rea- 
son why we hate her. She is poisonous, in a way, if 
by that we understand that the animal is armed with 
two fangs which cause the immediate death of the 
little victims that she catches; but there is a great 
difference between killing a Midge and harming a 
Man. However quickly the Spider's poison kills 
insects, it is not as a rule serious for us and causes 
less trouble than a gnat-bite. That, at least, is what 
we can safely say about the great majority of Spi- 
ders. 

Nevertheless, a few are to be feared. The Ital- 

209 



210 . INSECT ADVENTURES 

lans say that the Tarantula produces convulsions 
and frenzied dances in the person stung by her. 
Music is the only cure for this, and they tell us some 
tunes are better than others. The tarantella, 
a lively dance, probably owes its name to this idea 
of the Italian peasants. The story makes us feel 
like laughing, but, after all, the bite of the Tarantula 
may possibly bring on some nervous trouble which 
music will relieve; and possibly a very energetic 
dance makes the patient break out into a perspira- 
tion and so get rid of the poison. 

The most powerful Spider in my neighborhood, 
the Black-bellied Tarantula, will presently show us 
what her poison can do. But first I will introduce 
her to you in her home, and tell you about her hunt- 
ing. 

This Tarantula is dressed in black velvet on the 
lower surface, with brown stripes on the abdomen 
and gray and white rings around the legs. Her 
favorite dwelling-place is the dry, pebbly ground, 
covered with sun-scorched thyme. In my plot of 
waste ground, there are quite twenty of these Spi- 
ders' burrows. I hardly ever pass by one of these 
haunts without giving a glance down the pit where 
gleam, like diamonds, the four great eyes, the four 
telescopes of the hermit. The four other eyes, 
which are much smaller, are not visible at that depth. 

The Tarantula's dwellings are pits about a foot 
deep, dug by herself with her fangs, going straight 
down at first and then bent elbow-wise. They are 
about an inch wide. On the edge of the hole stands 



THE TARANTULA 211 

a curb, formed of straw, bits and scraps of all sorts, 
and even small pebbles, the size of a hazel-nut. The 
whole is kept in place and cemented with the Spider's 
silk. Sometimes this curb, or little tower, is an inch 
high; sometimes it is a mere rim. 

I wished to catch some of these Spiders, so I 
waved a spikelet of grass at the entrance of the 
burrow to imitate the humming of a Bee. I expected 
that the Tarantula would rush out, thinking she 
heard a prey. My scheme did not succeed. The 
Tarantula, indeed, came a little way up her tube to 
find out the meaning of the sounds at her door; but 
she soon scented a trap ; she remained motionless at 
mid-height and would not come any farther. 

I found that the best method to secure the wily 
Tarantula was to procure a supply of live Bumble- 
bees. I put one into a little bottle with a mouth 
just wide enough to cover the opening of the bur- 
row; and I turned the apparatus thus baited over 
the opening. The powerful Bee at first fluttered and 
hummed about her glass prison; then, seeing a bur- 
row like that made by her own family, she went into 
it without much hesitation. She was very foolish: 
while she went down, the Spider came up; and the 
meeting took place in the perpendicular passage. 
For a few moments, I heard a sort of death-song: 
it was the humming of the poor Bumble-bee. This 
was followed by a long silence. I removed the bot- 
tle and explored the pit with a pair of pincers. 
I brought out the Bumble-bee, motionless, dead. 
A terrible tragedy must have happened. The Spider 



212 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




followed, refusing to let go so rich a booty. Game 
and huntress were brought outside the hole, which I 
stopped up with a pebble. Outside her own house 
the Tarantula is timid and hardly able to run away. 
To push her with a straw into a paper bag was the 
work of a second. Soon I had a colony of Taran- 
tulas in my laboratory. 

I did not give the Tarantula the Bee merely in 
order to capture her. I wished to know also her 
manner of hunting. I knew that she is one of those 
insects who live from day to day on what they kill. 
She does not store up preserved food for her chil- 
dren, like the Beetles; she is not a "paralyzer," like 
the Wasps you have read about, who cleverly spare 



THE TARANTULA 213 

their game so as to leave It a glimmer of life and 
keep it fresh for weeks at a time; she is a killer, 
who makes a meal off her capture on the spot. I 
wished to find out how she kills them so quickly. 

She does not go In for peaceable game. The big 
Grasshopper, with the powerful jaws, the Bee and 
other wearers of poisoned daggers must fall Into her 
hole from time to time, and the duel she fights with 
them Is nearly equal as far as weapons go. For the 
poisonous fangs of the Spider the Wasp has her 
poisoned dagger or sting. Which of the two bandits 
shall have the best of It? The Tarantula has no 
second means of defense, no cord to bind her vic- 
tim, as the Garden Spiders have. These cover the 
captives with their silk, making all resistance im- 
possible. The Tarantula has a riskier job. She has 
only her courage and her fangs, and she must leap 
upon her dangerous prey and kill it quickly. She 
must know exactly where to strike, for, strong 
though her poison Is, I cannot believe it would kill 
the prey Instantly at any point where she happens 
to bite. She must bite in some spot of vital im- 
portance. 



214 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




A FIGHT WITH A CARPENTER-BEE 



Instead of with the Bumble-bee, who enters the 
Spider's burrow, I wish to make the Tarantula fight 
with some other insect, who will stay above ground. 
For this purpose I take one of the largest and most 
powerful Bees that I can find, the Carpenter-bee, 
clad in black velvet, with wings of purple gauze. 
She is nearly an inch long; her sting is very painful 
and produces a swelling that hurts for a long time. 
I know, because I have been stung. Here indeed is 
a foe worthy of the Tarantula. 

I catch several Carpenter-bees, place them one 
by one in bottles, and choose a strong, bold Taran- 
tula, one moreover who appears to be very hungry. 
I put the bottle baited with a Carpenter-bee upside 
down over her door. The Bee buzzes gravely in 
her glass bell; the Spider comes up from the re- 
cesses of her cave; she is on the threshold, but in- 
side; she looks; she waits. I also wait. The quar- 
ters, the half-hours pass; nothing happens. The 
Spider goes down again: she probably thought the 



THE TARANTULA 215 

attempt too dangerous. I try In this way three more 
Tarantulas, but cannot make them leave their lairs. 

At last I have better success. A Spider suddenly 
rushes from her hole : she is unusually warlike, 
doubtless because she is very hungry. She attacks 
the Bee in the bottle, and the combat lasts for but 
the twinkling of an eye. The sturdy Carpenter-bee 
is dead. Where did the murderess strike her? 
Right In the nape of the neck; her fangs are still 
there. She has the knowledge which I suspected: 
she has bitten the only point she could bite to pro- 
duce sudden death. She has struck the center of 
the victim's nervous system. 

I make more experiments and find that It Is only 
once In a while that the Tarantula will come out to 
fight the Carpenter-bee, but each time that she 
does so she kills it in the same way. The reason of 
the Tarantula's hesitation is plain. An insect of 
this kind cannot be seized recklessly : the Tarantula 
who missed her strike by biting at random would do 
so at the risk of her life. Stung in any other place, 
the Bee might live for hours and manage to sting 
her foe with her poisoned dagger. The Spider is 
well aware of this. In the safe shelter of her 
threshold she watches for the right moment; she 
waits for the big Bee to face her, when the neck is 
easily grabbed. 



2l6 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




THE tarantula's POISON 



The Tarantula's poison is a pretty dangerous 
weapon, as we shall see. I make a Tarantula bite 
the leg of a young, well-fledged Sparrow, ready to 
leave the nest. A drop of blood flows; the wounded 
spot is surrounded by a reddish circle, changing to 
purple. The bird almost immediately loses the use 
of its leg, which drags, with the toes doubled in; it 
hops upon the other leg. Aside from this, the pa- 
tient does not seem to trouble much about his hurt; 
his appetite is good. My daughters feed him on 
Flies, bread-crumb, apricot-pulp. He is sure to get 
well; he will recover his strength; the poor victim 



THE TARANTULA 217 

of the curiosity of science will be restored to liberty. 
This IS the wish and intention of us all. Twelve 
hours later, we are still more hopeful; the invalid 
takes nourishment readily; he clamors for it, if we 
keep him waiting. Two days after, he refuses his 
food. Wrapping himself stoically in his rumpled 
feathers, the Sparrow hunches into a ball, now mo- 
tionless, now twitching. My girls take him in the 
hollow of their hands and warm him with their 
breath. The spasms become more frequent. A 
gasp tells us that all is over. The bird is dead. 

There is a certain coolness among us at the 
evening meal. I read silent reproaches, because of 
my experiment, in the eyes of the home-circle; I 
know they think me cruel. The death of the un- 
fortunate Sparrow has saddened the whole family. 
I myself feel remorseful: what I have found out 
seems to me too dearly bought. 

Nevertheless, I had the courage to try again with 
a Mole who was caught stealing from our lettuce- 
beds. I put him in a cage and fed him on a varied 
diet of insects — Beetles and Grasshoppers. He 
crunched them up with a fine appetite. Twenty-four 
hours of this life convinced me that the Mole was 
making the best of the bill of fare and taking kindly 
to his captivity. 

I made the Tarantula bite him at the tip of the 
snout. When put back in his cage, the Mole kept 
on scratching his nose with his broad paws. The 
thing seemed to burn, to itch. From now on, he ate 
less and less of the store of insects : on the evening 



2i8 INSECT ADVENTURES 

of the following day, he refused them altogether. 
About thirty-six hours after being bitten, the Mole 
died during the night, and certainly not from star- 
vation, for there were still many live insects in the 
cage. 

The bite of my Tarantula is therefore dangerous 
to other animals than insects: It is fatal to the Spar- 
row, It Is fatal to the Mole. I did not make any 
more experiments, but I should say that people had 
better beware of the bite of this Spider. It is not 
to be trifled with. 

Think, just for a moment, of the skill of the 
Spider, the insect-killer, as contrasted with the skill 
of the Wasps, the insect-paralyzers. These insect- 
killers, who live on their prey, strike the game dead 
at once by stinging the nerve-centers of the neck; 
the paralyzers, on the other hand, who wish to keep 
the food fresh for their larvae, destroy the power 
of movement by stinging the game In the other nerve- 
centers, lower down. They do not acquire this 
knowledge, they have It as soon as they are born. 
And they teach those of us who think that there is 
something behind It all, that there Is Some One who 
has planned things for Insects and men alike. 



THE tarantula's HUNTING 



From the Tarantulas whom I have captured and 
placed in pans filled with earth in my laboratory, I 
learn still more about their hunting. They are really 



THE TARANTULA 219 

magnificent, these captives. With their great bodies 
inside their burrows, their heads outside, their glassy 
eyes staring, their legs gathered for a spring, for 
hours and hours they wait, motionless, bathing lux- 
uriously in the sun. 

Should a titbit to her liking happen to pass, at 
once the watcher darts from her tall tower, swift as 
an arrow from the bow. With a dagger-thrust in 
the neck, she stabs the Locust, Dragon-fly, or other 
prey; and she as quickly climbs her tower and re- 
tires with her capture. The performance is a won- 
derful exhibition of skill and speed. 

She very seldom misses the game, provided that 
It pass at a convenient distance, within reach of her 
bound. But if it be farther away she takes no notice 
of it. Scorning to go In pursuit, she allows It to 
roam at will. 

This proves that the Tarantula has great patience, 
for the burrow has nothing that can serve to at- 
tract victims. At best, refuge provided by the tower 
may, once In a long while, tempt some weary way- 
faring insect to use It as a resting-place. But, If 
the game does not come to-day, It is sure to come 
to-morrow, the next day, or later, for there are many 
Locusts hopping in the waste land, and they are not 
always able to regulate their leaps. Some day or 
other, chance Is bound to bring one of them near 
the burrow. Then the Spider springs upon the vic- 
tim from the ramparts. Until then, she stoically 
watches and fasts. She will dine when she can ; but 
she will finally dine. 



220 INSECT ADVENTURES 

The Tarantula really does not suffer much from 
a long fast. She has an accommodating stomach, 
which is satisfied to be gorged to-day and to remain 
empty afterwards for goodness knows how long. 
When I had the Spiders in my laboratory, I some- 
times neglected to feed them for weeks at a time, 
and they were none the worse for it. After they 
have fasted a long time, they do not pine away, but 
are smitten with a wolf-like hunger. 

In her youth, before she has a burrow, the Taran- 
tula earns her living in another manner. Clad in 
gray like her elders, but without the black-velvet 
apron which she receives on reaching the marriage- 
able age, she roams among the stubby grass. This 
is true hunting. When the right kind of game heaves 
in sight, the Spider pursues It, drives it from its shel- 
ters, follows it hot-foot. The fugitive gains the 
heights, and makes as though to fly away. He has 
not the time. With an upward leap, the Tarantula 
grabs him before he can rise. 

I am charmed with the quick way in which my 
year-old Spider boarders seize the Flies that I 
provide for them. In vain does the Fly take refuge a 
couple of inches up, on some blade of grass. With 
a sudden spring into the air, the Spider pounces on 
her prey. No Cat Is quicker In catching her Mouse. 

But these are the feats of youth not handicapped 
by fatness. Later, when the bag of eggs has to be 
trailed along, the Tarantula cannot Indulge In gym- 
nastics. She then digs herself her hunting-lodge. 



THE TARANTULA 221 

and sits in her watch-tower, on the lookout for 
game. 




THE tarantula's BAG 



You will be surprised to hear how devoted this ter- 
rible Tarantula Is to her family. 

Early one morning In August, I found a Taran- 
tula spinning on the ground a silk network covering 
an extent about as large as the palm of one's hand. 
It was coarse and shapeless, but firmly fixed. This is 
the floor on which the Spider means to work. It 
will protect her nest from the sand. 

On this floor she weaves a round mat, about the 
size of a fifty-cent piece and made of superb white 
silk. She thickens the outer part of It, until it be- 
comes a sort of bowl, surrounded by a wide, flat 
edge. Upon this bowl she lays her eggs. These she 
covers with silk. The result is a pill set In the mid- 
dle of a circular carpet. 



222 INSECT ADVENTURES 

With her legs she takes up and breaks off one by 
one the threads that keep the round mat stretched 
on the coarse floor. At the same time, she grips this 
sheet with her fangs, lifts it by degrees, tears it from 
its base, and folds it over upon the globe of eggs. It 
is hard work. The whole thing totters, the floor col- 
lapses, heavy with sand. The Tarantula, by a move- 
ment of her legs, casts these soiled shreds aside. 
She pulls with her fangs and sweeps with her broom- 
like legs, till she has pulled away her bag of eggs. 

It is like a white-silk pill, soft and sticky to the 
touch, as big as an average cherry. If you look 
closely, you will notice, running horizontally around 
the middle, a fold which a needle is able to raise 
without breaking it. This Is the edge of the circu- 
lar mat, drawn over the lower half of the bag. The 
upper half, through which the young Tarantulas 
will go out, is less well protected: Its only wrapper 
is the silk spun over the eggs Immediately after they 
were laid. 

Inside, there Is nothing but the eggs : no mat- 
tress, no soft eider down, like that of the Banded 
Spider. This Tarantula has no need to guard her 
eggs against the weather, for the hatching will take 
place long before the cold weather comes. 

The mother has been busy the whole morning over 
her bag. Now she is tired. She embraces her dear 
pill and remains motionless. I shall see her no more 
to-day. Next morning I find the Spider carrying her 
bag of eggs slung behind her. 

For three weeks and more the Tarantula trails 



THE TARANTULA 223 

the bag of eggs hanging to her spinnerets. When 
she comes up from her shaft to lean upon the curb 
and bask In the sun, when she suddenly retires un- 
derground in the face of danger, and when she is 
roaming the country before settling down, she never 
lets go her precious bag, though it is a very incon- 
venient burden In walking, climbing or leaping. If, 
by some accident, it become detached from the fas- 
tening to which it is hung, she flings herself madly 
on her treasure and lovingly embraces it, ready to 
bite the person who would take it from her. She 
restores the pill to its place with a quick touch of 
her spinnerets, and strides off, still threatening. 

Towards the end of summer, every morning, as 
soon as the sun Is hot, the Tarantulas come up from 
the bottom of their burrows with their bags and sta- 
tion themselves at the opening. Earlier in the sea- 
son they have taken long naps on the threshold in 
the sun in the middle of the day; but now they as- 
cend for a different reason. Before, the Tarantula 
came out into the sun for her own sake. Leaning 
on the parapet, she had the front half of her body 
outside the pit and the back half Inside. Her eyes 
took their fill of light; the body remained In the 
dark. When carrying her egg-bag the Spider re- 
verses her position: the front is in the pit, the rear 
outside. With her hind-legs she holds the white 
pill, bulging with germs, lifted above the entrance; 
gently she turns and re-turns it, so as to present every 
side to the life-giving rays of the sun. And this 
goes on for half the day, as long as the temperature 



224 INSECT ADVENTURES 

IS high; and it is repeated daily, with exquisite pa- 
tience, during three or four weeks. To hatch its 
eggs, the bird covers them with the quilt of its 
breast; it strains them to the furnace of its heart. 
The Tarantula turns hers in front of the hearth of 
hearths : she gives them the sun as an incubator. 




THE tarantula's BABIES 

In the early days of September, the young ones, 
who have been some time hatched, are ready to come 
out. The pill rips open along the middle fold. We 
have read of this fold. Does the mother, feeling 
the brood quicken inside the satin wrapper, herself 
break open the vessel at the right moment? It 
seems probable. On the other hand, it may burst 
of itself, as does the Banded Spider's balloon, a 
tough wallet which opens a breach of its own accord, 
long after the mother has ceased to exist. 



THE TARANTULA 225 

As they come out of the pill, the little Tarantulas, 
to the number of about a couple of hundred, clam- 
ber on the mother Tarantula's back and there sit 
motionless, jammed close together, forming a sort 
of bark of mingled legs and bodies. The mother 
cannot be recognized under this live cloak. When 
the hatching is over, the wallet is loosened from the 
spinnerets and cast aside as a worthless rag. 

The little ones are very good: none stirs, none 
tries to get more room for himself at his neighbor's 
expense. What are they doing there, so quietly? 
They allow themselves to be carted about, like the 
young of the Opossum. Whether she sit in long 
meditation at the bottom of her den, or come to the 
opening, in mild weather, to bask in the sun, the 
Tarantula never throws off her greatcoat of swarm- 
ing youngsters until the fine season comes. 

If, In the middle of winter, in January, or Feb- 
ruary, I happen, out in the fields, to ransack the Spi- 
der's dwelling, after the rain, snow, and frost have 
battered It and, as a rule, destroyed the curb at 
the entrance, I always find her at home, still full of 
vigor, still carrying her family. This upbringing 
of her youngsters on her back lasts five or six 
months at least, without interruption. The cele- 
brated American carrier, the Opossum, who lets 
her children go after a few weeks' carting, cuts a 
poor figure beside the Tarantula. 

What do the little ones eat on their mother's 
spine? Nothing, so far as I know. I do not see 
them grow larger. I find them, when they finally 




"Does she help them to regain their place on her 

BACK?'* 



THE TARANTULA 227 

leave to shift for themselves, just as they were when 
they left the bag. 

During the bad season, the mother herself eats 
very little. At long intervals she accepts, in my 
jars, a belated Locust, whom I have captured, for 
her benefit, in the sunnier nooks. In order to keep 
herself in condition, as she is when she is dug up in 
the course of my winter excavations, she must there- 
fore sometimes break her fast and come out in 
search of prey, without, of course, discarding her 
live cloak of youngsters. 

The expedition has its dangers. The little Spi- 
ders may be brushed oE by a blade of grass. What 
becomes of them when they have a fall? Does the 
mother give them a thought? Does she help them 
to regain their place on her back? Not at all. 
The affection of a Spider's heart, divided among 
some hundreds, can spare but a very feeble portion 
to each. The Tarantula hardly troubles, whether 
one youngster fall from his place, or six, or all of 
them. She waits quietly for the victims of the mis- 
hap to get out of their own difficulty, which they do 
for that matter, and very nimbly. 

I sweep the whole family from the back of one of 
my boarders with a hair-pencil. Not a sign of 
emotion, not an attempt at search on the part of the 
mother. After trotting about a little on the sand, 
the dislodged youngsters find, these here, those there, 
one or another of the mother s legs, spread wide in 
a circle. By means of these climbing-poles they 
swarm to the top, and soon the group on the moth- 



228 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



cr's back resumes its original form. Not one of the 
lot is missing. The Tarantula's sons know their 
trade as acrobats to perfection : the mother need not 
trouble her head about their fall. 




mmm^M 













A MEAL OF SUNSHINE 



Does the Tarantula at least feed the youngsters 
who, for seven months, swarm upon her back? Does 
she invite them to the party when she has captured 
a prize? I thought so at first; and I gave special 
attention to watching the mothers eat. Usually, the 
prey is devoured out of sight, In the burrow; but 
sometimes a meal Is taken on the threshold, in the 
open air. Well, I see then that while the mother 
eats, the youngsters do not budge from their camp- 
ing ground on her back. Not one quits its place 
or gives a sign of wishing to slip down and join in 
the meal. Nor does the mother invite them to come 



THE TARANTULA 229 

and refresh themselves, or put any left-over food 
aside for them. She feeds and the others look on, 
or rather remain indifferent to what is happening. 
Their perfect quiet during the Tarantula's feast is 
a proof that they are not hungry. 

Then what do they live upon, during their seven 
months' upbringing on the mother's back? One 
thinks of their absorbing nourishment from their 
mother's skin. We must give up this notion. Never 
are they seen to put their mouths to it. And the 
Tarantula, far from being exhausted and shrivel- 
ing, keeps perfectly well and plump; she even puts 
on flesh. 

Once more, with what do the little ones keep up 
their strength? We do not like to suggest that they 
are still living on the food they received in the egg, 
especially when we consider that they must use 
the energy drawn from this food to produce silk, 
a material of the highest importance, of which a 
plentiful use will be made presently. There must 
be other powers at play in the tiny animal's ma- 
chinery. 

We could understand their not needing anything 
to eat if they did not move; complete quiet is not 
life. But the young Spiders, although usually quiet 
on their mother's back, are at all times ready for 
exercise and for agile swarming. When they fall 
from the mother's baby-carriage, they briskly pick 
themselves up, briskly scramble up a leg and make 
their way to the top. It is a splendidly nimble and 
spirited performance. Besides, once seated, they 



230 INSECT ADVENTURES 

have to keep a firm balance ; they have to stretch and 

stiffen their little limbs in order to hang on to their 
neighbors. As a matter of fact, there is no abso- 
lute rest for them. 

Now physiology teaches us that not a muscle 
works without using up energy. The animal is like 
a machine ; it must renew its body, which wears out 
with movement, and it must have something to make 
heat, which is turned into action. We can compare 
It with the locomotive-engine. As the Iron horse 
does Its work. It gradually wears out Its pistons, Its 
rods. Its wheels, its boiler-tubes, all of which have 
to be made good from time to time. The foundry- 
man and the blacksmith repair it, supply It with 
new parts; it is as if they were giving it food to re- 
new itself. But, although It be brand-new, it cannot 
move until the stoker shovels some coal Into its 
Inside and sets fire to it. This coal is like energy-pro- 
ducing food; It makes the engine work. 

Things are just the same with the animal. Since 
nothing Is made from nothing, the little new-born 
animal Is made from the food there was In the egg. 
This is tissue-forming food which Increases the body, 
up to a certain point, and renews It as it wears away. 
But It must have heat-food, or energy-food, too. 
Then the animal will walk, run, jump, swim, fly, or 
move in any one of a thousand manners. 

To return to the young Spiders : they grow no 
larger until after they leave their mother. At the 
age of seven m^onths they are the same as at birth. 
The egg supplied the food necessary for their tiny 



THE TARANTULA 231 

frames; and they do not need more tissue-forming 
food as long as they do not grow. This we can un- 
derstand. But where do they get the energy-food 
that makes them able to move about so actively? 

Here is an Idea. What Is coal, the energy-food of 
the locomotive? It Is the fossil remains of trees 
which, ages ago, drank the sunlight with their leaves. 
Coal Is really stored-up sunlight and the locomotive, 
devouring It, Is devouring sunlight. 

Beasts of flesh and blood act no otherwise. 
Whether they eat one another or plants, they always 
live on the stimulant of the sun's heat, a heat stored 
in grass, fruit, seed, and those which feed on such. 
The sun, the soul of the universe, is the supreme 
giver of energy. 

Instead of being served up in food and being 
digested through the stomach, could not this sun- 
energy enter the animal directly and charge it with 
activity, just as the electric battery charges an ac- 
cumulator with power? Why not live on sun, see- 
ing that, after all, we find nothing but sun in the 
fruits which we eat? 

The chemists say they are going to feed us some 
day on artificial food-stuffs put up In drug-stores. 
Perhaps the laboratory and the factory will take 
the place of the farm. Why should not physical 
science do as well? It would leave to the chemist 
the preparation of tissue-forming food; it would 
give us energy-food. With the help of some In- 
genious apparatus, It would pump Into us our daily 
supply of sun-energy, to be later spent in movement. 



232 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



so that we could keep going without eating at all. 
What a delightful world, where one would lunch off 
a ray of sunshine ! 

Are we dreaming, or will something like this 
happen some day? It is worth while surely for 
the scientists to think about it. 




THE FLIGHT OF THE BABY TARANTULAS 



As the month of March comes to an end, the 
mother Tarantula is outside her burrow, squatting on 
the parapet at the entrance. It is time for the young- 
sters to leave her. She lets them do as they please, 



THE TARANTULA 233 

seeming perfectly indifferent to what is happening. 

The departure begins during glorious weather, in 
the hottest hours of the morning. First these, then 
those, of the little ones, according as they feel them- 
selves soaked with sunshine, leave the mother in 
batches, run about for a moment on the ground, and 
then quickly reach the trellis-work of the cage in 
my laboratory, which they climb with surprising 
quickness. They all make for the heights, though 
their mother Is accustomed to stay on the solid 
ground. There Is an upright ring at the top of the 
cage. The youngsters hurry to it. They hang out 
threads across the opening; they stretch others from 
the ring to the nearest points of the trellis-work. 
On these foot-bridges they perform slack-rope ex- 
ercises. The tiny legs open out from time to time 
as though to reach the most distant points. I be- 
gin to realize that they wish to go higher. 

I top the trellis with a branch as high again. 
The little Spiders hastily scramble up it, reach the 
tip of the topmost twigs and from there send out 
threads that fasten themselves to every surrounding 
object. These are suspension-bridges; and my beast- 
les nimbly run along them, incessantly passing to and 
fro. They seem to wish to climb still higher. 

I take a nine-foot reed, with tiny branches spread- 
ing right up to the top, and place it above the cage. 
The little Tarantulas clamber to the very summit. 
Here they send out longer threads, which are left 
to float, and which again form bridges when their 
loose ends touch some object. The rope-dancers 



234 INSECT ADVENTURES 

embark upon them and form garlands which the 
least breath of air swings daintily. One cannot see 
the threads at all unless they come between the eyes 
and the sun; the Spiders look as if they were danc- 
ing in the air. 

Then, suddenly, shaken by the air-currents, the 
delicate mooring breaks and flies through space. 
Behold the little Spiders fly off and away, hanging 
to their threads ! If the wind be favorable, they 
can land at great distances. 

The bands of little Spiders keep on leaving thus 
for a week or two, if the weather is fine. On cloudy 
days, none dreams of going. The travelers need 
the kisses of the sun, which give them energy and 
vigor. 

At last, the whole family has disappeared, carried 
afar by its flying-ropes. The mother is alone. The 
loss of her children hardly seems to distress her. 
She goes on with her hunting with greater energy, 
now that she Is not hampered with her coat of little 
ones. She will have other families, become a grand- 
mother and a great-grandmother, for the Tarantu- 
las live several years. 

In this species of Tarantula, as we have seen, a 
sudden instinct arises in the young ones, to disap- 
pear, as promptly and forever, a few hours later. 
This is the climbing-instinct, which is unknown to 
the older Tarantula and soon forgotten by the young 
ones, who alight upon the ground and wander there 
for many a long day before they begin to build their 
burrows. Neither of them dreams of climbing to 



THE TARANTULA 235 

the top of a grass-stalk. Yet here we have the young 
Tarantula, wishing to leave her mother and to travel 
far away by the easiest and swiftest methods, sud- 
denly becoming an enthusiastic climber. We know 
her object. From on high, finding a wide space be- 
neath her, she sends a thread floating. It is caught 
by the wind, and carries her hanging to It. We have 
our aeroplanes; she too possesses her flying-ma- 
chine. She makes it In her hour of need, and when 
the journey is finished thinks no more about it. 




CHAPTER XX 



THE CLOTHO SPIDER 

PRETTILY shaped and clad, as far as a Spider 
can be, the Clotho Spider is, above all, a very 
clever spinstress. She is named after the Clotho of 
antiquity, the youngest of the Three Fates, who 
holds the distaff whence our destinies are spun. It 
is a pity that the Fate Clotho cannot spin as soft 
lives for us as the exquisite silk the Spider Clotho 
spins for herself! 

If we would make the acquaintance of the Clotho 
Spider we must go up the rocky slopes in the olive- 
land, scorched and blistered by the sun, turn over 
the flat stones, those of a fair size, search, above all, 
the piles which the shepherds set up for a seat from 
which to watch the sheep browsing amongst the lav- 
ender below. Do not be too easily disheartened If 
you do not find her at first. The Clotho is rare; 
not every spot suits her. If we are lucky, we shall 
see, clinging to the lower surface of the stone whict 

236 



THE CLOTHO SPIDER 



237 




we have lifted, a queer-looking thing, shaped like 
the dome of a building turned upside down, and 
about half the size of a tangerine orange. The out- 
side is hung with small shells, bits of earth, and, 
especially, dried insects. 

The edge of the dome is scalloped into a dozen 
pointed scallops, the points of which spread and are 
fixed to the stone. A flat roof closes the top of the 
dwelling. 

Where is the entrance? All the arches of the edge 
open upon the roof; not one leads inside. Yet the 
owner of the house must go out from time to time, 
if only in search of food; on returning from her 
expedition, she must go in again. How does she 
make her exits and her entrances? A straw will 
tell us the secret. 

Pass it over the threshold of the various arches. 
It finds them all carefully closed, apparently. But 



238 INSECT ADVENTURES 

one of the scallops, if cleverly coaxed, opens at the 
edge into two lips and stands slightly ajar. This is 
the door, which at once shuts again of its own elas- 
ticity. Nor is this all : the Spider, when she returns 
home, often bolts herself in; that is to say, she joins 
and fastens the two leaves of the door with a little 
silk. 

The Clotho, when in danger, runs quickly home; 
she opens the chink with a touch of her claw, enters 
and disappears. The door closes of itself and is sup- 
plied, in case of need, with a lock consisting of a few 
threads. No burglar, on the outside of so many 
arches, one and all alike, will ever discover under 
which one the fugitive vanished so suddenly. 

Let us open the Spider's cabin. What luxury! 
We have read how the Princess in the fairy-tale was 
unable to rest, if there was a crumpled rose-leaf in 
her bed. The Clotho is quite as fastidious. Her 
couch is more delicate than swan's-down and whiter 
than the fleece of clouds where brood the summer 
storms. It is the ideal blanket. Above is a canopy 
or tester of equal softness. Between the two nestles 
the Spider, short-legged, clad in somber garments, 
with five yellow favors on her back. 

Rest in this exquisite retreat demands that it be 
perfectly steady, especially on gusty days, when sharp 
draughts creep under the stone dwelling. By taking 
a careful look at her we can see how the Spider man- 
ages this. The arches that bear the weight of the 
building are fastened to the stone at each end. More- 
over, where they touch, you may see a cluster of 



THE CLOTHO SPIDER 239 

diverging threads that creep along the stone and 
cling to it throughout their length, which spreads 
afar. I have measured some that were fully nine 
feet long. These are so many cables; they are like 
the ropes and pegs that hold the Arab's tent in 
position. 

Another detail attracts our attention : whereas the 
inside of the house is exquisitely clean, the outside is 
covered with dirt, bits of earth, chips of rotten wood, 
little pieces of gravel. Often there are worse things 
still: hung up or embedded are the dry carcasses of 
Beetles that favor under-rock shelters; parts of 
Thousand-legged Worms, bleached by the sun; 
snail-shells, chosen from among the smallest. 

These relics are plainly, for the most part, table- 
leavings, broken victuals. Unskilled in laying traps, 
the Clotho lives upon the insects who wander from 
one stone to another. Whoever ventures under the 
slab at night is strangled by the hostess; and the 
dried-up carcass, instead of being flung to a distance, 
IS hung to the silken wall, as though the Spider 
wished to make a bogey-house of her home. But 
this cannot be her aim. To act like the ogre who 
hangs his victim from the castle battlements is the 
worst way to disarm suspicion In the passers-by 
whom you are lying in wait to capture. 

There are other reasons which increase our doubts. 
The shells hung up are most often empty; but there 
are also some occupied by the Snail, alive and un- 
touched. What can the Spider do with these snail- 
shells wherein the animal retreats so far that she can- 



240 INSECT ADVENTURES 

not reach it? The Spider cannot break the hard 
shell or get at the hermit through the opening. Then 
why should she collect these prizes, whose slimy flesh 
is probably not to her taste? We begin to suspect a 
simple question of ballast and balance. The House 
Spider prevents her web, spun in a corner of the 
wall, from losing its shape at the least breath of air, 
by loading it with crumbling plaster and allowing 
tiny fragments of mortar to accumulate. The Clotho 
Spider dumps down on her abode any more or less 
heavy object, mainly corpses of insects, because she 
need not look for these and finds them ready to hand 
after each meal. They are weights, not trophies; 
they take the place of materials that must otherwise 
be collected from a distance and lifted to the top. 
In this way, a breastwork is obtained that strengthens 
and steadies the house. Further balance is often 
given by tiny shells and other objects hanging a 
long way down. The Clotho knows the laws of 
balancing; by means of additional weights, she is able 
to lower the center of gravity and thus to give her 
dwelling the proper equilibrium and roominess. 

Now what does she do in her softly-wadded 
home? Nothing, that I know of. With a full 
stomach, her legs luxuriously stretched over the 
down carpet, she does nothing, thinks of nothing; 
she listens to the sound of the earth revolving on its 
axis. It is not sleep, still less is it waking; it is a 
middle state where the Spider is conscious of nothing 
except that she is happy. We ourselves, when com- 
fortably in bed, enjoy, just before we fall asleep, a 



THE CLOTHO SPIDER 241 

few moments of bliss, when we neither think nor 
worry; and those moments are among the sweetest in 
our lives. The Clotho Spider seems to know similar 
moments and to make the most of them. 




CHAPTER XXI 



OF the six Garden Spiders I have noticed, two 
only, the Banded and the Silky Spiders, stay 
constantly in their webs, even under the blinding rays 
of a fierce sun. The others, as a rule, do not show 
themselves until nightfall. At some distance from 
the net they have a rough and ready retreat in the 
brambles, a hiding-place made of a few leaves held 
together by stretched threads. It is here that they 
usually remain in the daytime, motionless and sunk 
in meditation. 

But the shrill light that vexes them is the joy of 
the fields. At such time, the Locust hops more 
nimbly than ever, more gayly skims the Dragon-fly. 
Besides, the sticky web, in spite of the rents suf- 
fered during the night, is still in fairly good condi- 
tion. If some giddy-pated insect allow himself to be 

242 



THE SPIDER'S TELEGRAPH-WIRE 243 

caught, will the Spider, at the distance whereto she 
has retired, be unable to take advantage of the wind- 
fall? Never fear. She arrives in a flash. How 
does she know what has happened? Let us explain 
the matter. 

It Is the vibration of the web which tells her, 
rather than the sight of the captured object. To 
prove this, I laid upon several Spiders' webs a dead 
Locust. I placed the Locust where the Spider might 
have plainly seen it. Sometimes the Spider was in 
her web, and sometimes she was outside, In her 
hiding-place. In both cases, nothing happened at 
first. The Spider remained motionless, even when 
the Locust was at a short distance in front of her. 
She did not seem to see the game at all. Then, with 
a long straw, I set the dead insect trembling. 

That was quite enough. The Banded Spider and 
the Silky Spider hastened to the central floor, the 
others, who were In hiding, came down from the 
branch; all went to the Locust, bound him with tape, 
treated him, in short, as they would treat a live prey 
captured under the usual conditions. It took the 
shaking of the web to decide them to attack. 

If we look carefully behind the web of any Spider 
with a daytime hiding-place, we shall see a thread 
that starts from the center of the web and reaches 
the place where the Spider lurks. It is joined to the 
web at the central point only. Its length is usually 
about twenty-two Inches, but the Angular Spider, 
settled high up In the trees, has shown me some as 
long as eight or nine feet. 




"The slanting cord is a telegraph ivire;" 



THE SPIDER'S TELEGRAPH-WIRE 245 

This slanting line is a foot-bridge by which the 
Spider hurries to her web when there is something 
going on there, and then, when her errand is fin- 
ished, returns to her hut. But that is not all it is. If 
it were, the foot-bridge would be fastened to the 
upper end of the web. The journey would then be 
shorter and the slope less steep. 

The line starts from the center of the net because 
that is the place where the spokes meet and therefore 
where the vibration from any part of the net is best 
felt. Anything that moves upon the web sets it 
shaking. All then that is needed is a thread going 
from this central point to carry to a distance the 
news of a prey struggling in some part or other of 
the net. The slanting cord is not only a foot-bridge : 
it is a signaling-apparatus, a telegraph-wire. 

In their youth, the Garden Spiders, who are then 
very wide-awake, know nothing of the art of teleg- 
raphy. Only the old Spiders, meditating or dozing 
in their green tent, are warned from afar, by tele- 
graph, of what takes place on the net. 

To save herself from keeping a close watch that 
would be drudgery and to remain alive to events even 
when resting, with her back turned on the net, the 
hidden Spider always has her foot upon the tele- 
graph-wire. Here is a true story to prove it. 

An Angular Spider has spun her web between two 
laurestine-shrubs, covering a width of nearly a yard. 
The sun beats upon the snare, which is abandoned 
long before dawn. The Spider is in her day house, a 
resort easily discovered by following the telegraph- 



246 INSECT ADVENTURES 

wire. It IS a vaulted chamber of dead leaves, joined* 
together with a few bits of silk. The refuge is deep : 
the Spider disappears in it entirely, all but her 
rounded hind-quarters, which bar the entrance. 

With her front half plunged into the back of her 
hut, the Spider certainly cannot see her web; she 
could not even if she had good sight, instead of be- 
ing half blind as she is. Does she give up hunting 
during this period of bright sunlight? Not at all. 
Look again. 

Wonderful! One of her hind-legs is stretched 
outside the leafy cabin; and the signaling-thread 
ends just at the tip of that leg. Whoever has not 
seen the Spider in this attitude, with her hand, so 
to speak, on the telegraph-receiver, knows nothing of 
one of the most curious examples of animal clever- 
ness. Let any game appear upon the scene, and the 
slumberer, at once aroused by means of the leg 
receiving the vibrations, hastens up. A Locust whom 
I myself lay on the web gives her this agreeable 
shock, and what follows? If she is satisfied with 
her prey, I am still more satisfied with what I have 
learned. 

One word more. The web is often shaken by the 
wind. The signaling-cord must pass this vibration 
to the Spider. Nevertheless, she does not leave her 
hut and remains indifferent to the commotion pre- 
vailing in the net. Her line, therefore, is something 
better than a bell-rope ; it is a telephone capable, like 
our own, of transmitting infinitesimal waves of 



THE SPIDER'S TELEGRAPH-WIRE 247 

sound. Clutching her telephone-wire with a toe, the 
Spider listens with her leg; she can tell the difference 
between the vibration proceeding from a prisoner 
and the mere shaking caused by the wind. 




CHAPTER XXII 



THE CRAB-SPIDER 



THE Banded Spider, who works so hard to 
give her eggs a wonderfully perfect dwelling- 
house, becomes, after that, careless of her family. 
For what reasons? She lacks the time. She has to 
die when the first cold comes, whereas the eggs are 
to pass the winter in their cozy home. She cannot 
help deserting the nest. But, if the hatching were 
earlier and took place in the Spider's life, I imagine 
that she would be as devoted to her family as a 
Bird is. So I gather from the behavior of a shapely 
Spider who weaves no webs, lies in wait for her 
prey, and walks sideways, like a Crab. 

This Spider with the Crab-like figure does not 
know how to make nets for catching game. Without 
springs or snares, she lies hidden among the flowers, 
and waits for the arrival of the prey, which she kills 

248 



THE CRAB-SPIDER 249 

by a scientific stab in the neck. The particular species 
I have observed is passionately fond of the pursuit 
of the Domestic Bee. 

The Bee appears, seeking no quarrel, intent upon 
plunder. She tests the flowers with her tongue ; she 
chooses a spot that will yield a good return. Soon 
she is wrapped up in her harvesting. While she is 
filling her baskets and distending her crop, the Crab- 
spider, that bandit lurking under cover of the 
flowers, comes out of her hiding-place, creeps round 
behind the bustling insect, steals up close, and, with 
a sudden rush, nabs her in the nape of the neck. 
In vain the Bee protests and darts her sting at ran- 
dom; the assailant does not let go. 

Besides, the bite in the neck is paralyzing, because 
the nerve-centers are affected. The poor thing's legs 
stiffen; and all is over in a second. The murderess 
Spider now sucks the victim's blood at her ease and, 
when she has done, scornfully flings the drained 
corpse aside. 

We shall see the cruel vampire become a model 
of devotion where her family is concerned. The 
ogre loved his children; he ate the children of others. 
Under the tyranny of hunger, we are all of us, 
beasts and men alike, ogres. 

After all, this cutter of Bees' throats is a pretty, 
a very pretty creature, in spite of her unwieldy body 
fashioned like a squat pyramid and embossed on the 
base, on either side, with a pimple shaped like a 
camel's hump. The skin, more pleasing to the eye 
than any satin, is milk-white in some, In others lemon- 



250 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




yellow. There are fine ladies among them who 
adorn their legs with a number of pink bracelets and 
their backs with crimson patterns. A narrow, pale- 
green ribbon sometimes edges the right and left of 
the breast. The costume is not so rich as that of the 
Banded Spider, but much more elegant because of its 
soberness, its daintiness, and the artistic blending of 
its colors. People who shrink from touching any- 
other Spider do not fear to handle the beautiful Crab 
Spider, so gentle in appearance. 



THE CRAB-SPIDER 251 



THE crab-spider's NEST 



Skillful in the prompt despatch of her prey, the 
little Crab-spider is no less clever in the nesting art. 
I find her settled on a privet in the inclosure. Here, 
in the heart of a cluster of flowers, the luxurious 
creature plaits a little pocket of white satin, shaped 
like a wee thimble. It is the receptacle for the eggs. 
A round, flat lid, of a felted fabric, closes the mouth. 

Above this ceiling rises a dome of stretched 
threads and faded flowerets which have fallen from 
the cluster. This is the watcher's conning-tower. 
An opening, which is always free, gives access to this 
post. 

Here the Spider remains on constant duty. She 
has thinned greatly since she laid her eggs, has 
almost lost her figure. At the least alarm, she sallies 
forth, waves a threatening limb at the passing 
stranger and invites him, with a gesture, to keep his 
distance. Having put the intruder to flight, she 
quickly returns indoors. 

And what does she do in there, under her arch 
of withered flowers and silk? Night and day, she 
shields the precious eggs with her poor body spread 
out flat. Eating is neglected. No more lying in wait, 
no more Bees drained to the last drop of blood. 
Motionless, rapt in meditation, the Spider is sitting 
on her eggs. 

The brooding Hen does likewise, but she is also 
a heating-apparatus and, with the gentle warmth of 



252 INSECT ADVENTURES 

her body, awakens the germs to life. For the Spider, 
the heat of the sun is enough; and this alone keeps 
me from saying that she "broods." 

For two or three weeks, the little Spider, more 
and more wrinkled by lack of food, never relaxes her 
position. What is the withered thing waiting for, 
before expiring? She is waiting for her children to 
emerge ; the dying creature is still of use to them. 

When the Banded Spider's little ones come out 
from their balloon, they have long been orphans. 
There is none to come to their assistance; and they 
have not the strength to free themselves without 
help. The balloon has to split automatically and 
to scatter the youngsters and their flossy mattress all 
mixed up together. The Crab-spider's wallet, 
sheathed in leaves over the greater part of its sur- 
face, never bursts; nor does the lid rise, so carefully 
is it sealed down. Nevertheless, after the delivery 
of the brood, we see, at the edge of the lid, a small, 
gaping hole, an exit-window. Who contrived this 
window, which was not there at first? 

The fabric is too thick and tough to have yielded 
to the twitches of the feeble little prisoners. It was 
the mother, therefore, who, feeling her offspring 
shuffle impatiently under the silken ceiling, herself 
made a hole in the bag. She persists in Hving for 
five or six weeks, despite her shattered health, so 
as to give a last helping hand and open the door for 
her family. After performing this duty, she gently 
lets herself die, hugging her nest and turning into a 



THE CRAB-SPIDER 253 

shriveled relic. The Hen does not reach this height 
of unselfishness ! 



*^m^^^:?7^... 




THE YOUNG CRAB-SPIDERS 

It is in July that some little Crab-spiders that I 
have in my laboratory come out of their eggs. Know- 
ing their acrobatic habits, I have placed a bundle of 
slender twigs at the top of the cage in which they 
were born. All of them pass through the wire gauze 
and form a group on the summit of the brushwood, 
where they swiftly weave a roomy lounge of criss- 
cross threads. Here they stay, pretty quietly, for a 
day or two; then foot-bridges begin to be flung from 
one object to the next. This is the fortunate 
moment. 

I put the bunch laden with beasties on a small 
table, in the shade, before the open window. Soon 
they begin to spin threads to carry them away, but 
slowly and unsteadily. They hesitate, go back, fall 
short at the end of a thread, climb up again. In 
short, much trouble for a poor result. 



254 INSECT ADVENTURES 

As matters continue to drag, It occurs to me, at 
eleven o'clock, to take the bundle of brushwood 
swarming with the little Spiders, all eager to be off, 
and place it on the window-sill, in the glare of the 
sun. After a few minutes of heat and light, things 
move much faster. The little Spiders run to the top 
of the twigs, bustle about actively. I cannot see 
them manufacturing the ropes or sending them float- 
ing at the mercy of the air; but I guess their presence. 

Three or four Spiders start at a time, each going 
her own way. All are moving upwards, all are 
climbing some support, as can be told by the nimble 
motion of their legs. Moreover, you can see the 
thread behind them, where it is of double thickness. 
Then, at a certain height. Individual movement 
ceases. The tiny animal soars in space and shines, lit 
up by the sun. Softly it sways, then suddenly takes 
flight. 

What has happened? There is a slight breeze 
outside. The floating cable has snapped and the 
creature has gone off, borne on Its parachute. I see 
It drifting away, showing, like a spot of light, against 
the dark foliage of the near cypresses, some forty 
feet distant. It rises higher, it crosses over the 
cypress-screen. It disappears. Others follow, some 
higher, some lower, hither and thither. 

But the throng has finished its preparations ; the 
hour has come to disperse in swarms. We now see, 
from the crest of the brushwood, a continuous spray 
of starters, who shoot up like tiny rockets and mount 
in a spreading cluster. In the end. It Is like the 



■,;^^}0^M*.rn, 



«■: V 



7M 



m- \ 




"Like the finish of a fireworks display. 



256 INSECT ADVENTURES 

bouquet at the finish of a fireworks display, the 
sheaf of rockets fired all at once. The comparison 
is correct down to the dazzling light itself. Flaming 
in the sun like so many gleaming points, the little 
Spiders are the sparks of that living fireworks. 
What a glorious send-ofi I What an entrance into 
the world! 

Sooner or later, nearer or farther, the fall comes. 
To live, we have to descend, often very low, alas! 
The Spiderling, therefore, touches land. The para- 
chute tempers her fall. She is not hurt. 

The rest of her story escapes me. What infinitely 
tiny Midges does she capture before possessing the 
strength to stab her Bee? What are the methods, 
what the wiles of atom contending with atom? I 
know not. We shall find her again in spring, grown 
quite large and crouching among the flowers whence 
the Bee takes toll. 




CHAPTER XXIII 

THE LABYRINTH SPIDER 

WHILE the Garden Spiders are Incomparable 
weavers, many other Spiders have even more 
ingenious devices for catching game. Some of them 
are real celebrities, who are mentioned in all the 
books. 

Certain Bird Spiders, or American Tarantulas, 
live In a burrow like the Tarantula I have been tell- 
ing you about, but their burrow Is more perfect than 
hers. My Tarantula surrounds the mouth of her 
hole with a simple curb, a mere collection of tiny 
pebbles, sticks, and silk; the American ones fix a 
movable floor to theirs, a round shutter with a hinge, 
a groove, and a set of bolts. When one of these 
Tarantulas comes home, the lid drops into the groove 
and fits so exactly one cannot tell where it joins. If 
any one from outside tries to raise the trap-door, the 

257 



258 INSECT ADVENTURES 

Spider pushes the bolt, — that is to say, plants her 
claws into certain holes on the opposite side to the 
hinge, — props herself against the wall, and holds 
the door firmly. 

Another, the Water Spider, builds herself an 
elegant silken diving-bell, in which she stores air. 
She waits in it for the coming of game and keeps 
cool meanwhile. On scorching hot days, hers must 
be a real palace of luxury, such as men have some- 
times ventured to build under water, with mighty 
blocks of stone and marble. Tiberius, the wicked 
Roman Emperor, had such a submarine palace; but 
his is only a hateful memory, whereas the Water 
Spider's dainty tower still flourishes. 

If I had had the chance to observe these Spiders, 
I should gladly add a few unpublished facts to their 
life-history; but I must give up the idea. The Water 
Spider is not found in my district. The American 
Tarantula, the expert in hinged doors, I saw once 
only, by the side of a path. I was occupied with 
something else, and did not give it more than a pass- 
ing glance. I have never seen it again. 

But it is not only the uncommon insects that are 
worth attention. The common ones, if carefully 
observed, can tell us things just as important. I am 
interested in the Labyrinth Spider, which I find 
oftener than any other in the fields. Several times a 
week, in July, I go to study my Spiders on the spot, 
early in the morning, before the sun beats fiercely on 
one's neck. The children come with me, each pro- 
vided with an orange in case they get thirsty. 



THE LABYRINTH SPIDER 259 

We soon discover high silk buildings, the threads 
beaded with dew and glittering in the sun. The 
children are wonderstruck at those glorious chan- 
deliers, so that they even forget their oranges for a 
moment. I am not indifferent to them, either. Our 
Spider's labyrinth is a splendid spectacle. That and 
the concert of the Thrushes are worth getting up for. 

Half an hour's heat, and the magic jewels dis- 
appear with the dew. Now is the time to look at the 
webs. Here is one spreading its sheet over a large 
cluster of rock-roses; it is the size of a handkerchief. 
Many guy-ropes moor it to the brushwood. It 
covers the bush like a piece of white muslin. 

The web is flat at the edges and gradually hollows 
Into a crater, not unlike the bell of a hunting-horn. 
At the center is a funnel whose neck, narrowing by 
degrees, is eight or nine Inches deep and leads back 
Into the leafy thicket. 

At the entrance to the tube sits the Spider, who 
looks at us and shows no great excitement at our 
presence. She Is gray, modestly adorned on the 
thorax with two black ribbons and on the abdomen 
with two stripes In which white specks alternate with 
brown. She has a sort of double tall at the end of 
her body, a rather curious feature in a Spider. 

I expected to find, at the bottom of the Spider's 
funnel, a wadded cell where she might rest In her 
hours of leisure. On the contrary, there is only a 
sort of door, which stands always ajar so that the 
Spider may escape at any time through the grass and 
gain the open. 



26o INSECT ADVENTURES 

Above, in the Spider's web, there is a forest of 
ropes. It might be the rigging of a ship disabled by 
a storm. They run from every twig of the support- 
ing boughs, they are fastened to the tip of every 
branch. There are long ropes and short ropes, up- 
right and slanting, straight and bent, taut and slack, 
all criss-cross and a-tangle, to the height of three feet 
or so. The whole makes a chaos of netting, a real 
labyrinth which none but the very strongest insects 
can break through. 

There is nothing like the sticky snare of the 
Garden Spiders here. The threads are not sticky, 
but they are very bewildering. See this small Locust 
who has lighted on the rigging. He Is unable to get 
a steady foothold on that shaky support; he floun- 
ders about; and the more he struggles, the more he 
is entangled. The Spider, looking at him from her 
funnel, lets him have his way. She does not run up 
the ropes; she waits until the desperate prisoner in 
his struggles falls on the main part of the web. 

Then she comes, flings herself upon her prey, and 
slowly drains his blood. The Locust is lifeless at 
the first bite; the Spider's poison has settled him. 

When laying-time is at hand, the Spider changes 
her residence; she leaves her web, which is still in 
excellent condition; she does not come back to it. 
The time has come to make the nest. But where? 
The Spider knows well; I am in the dark. I spend 
whole mornings ransacking the bushes, until at last 
I learn the secret. The nest is some distance away 
from the web, in a low, thick cluster of bushes ; it is 



THE LABYRINTH SPIDER 



261 



a clumsy bundle of dead leaves, roughly drawn to- 
gether with silk threads. Under this rude covering 
is a pouch of fine texture containing the egg-casket. 
I am disappointed in the appearance of this 
Spider's nest, until I remember that she probably can- 
not do better In the places where she builds. In the 




262 INSECT ADVENTURES 

midst of a dense thicket, among a tangle of dead 
leaves and twigs, there is no room for an elegant 
piece of work. By way of experiment, I carry half 
a dozen Labyrinth Spiders into my laboratory near 
the laying-time, place them in large wire-gauze 
cages, standing in earthen pans filled with sand, with 
a sprig of thyme planted in the center to give a sup- 
port for each nest. Now they will show what they 
can do. 

The experiment works perfectly. By the end of 
August I have six nests, magnificent in shape and of 
a dazzling whiteness. The Spiders have had elbow- 
room, and they have done their best. The nests are 
ovals of exquisite white muslin, nearly as large as a 
Hen's egg. They are open at either end. The front- 
entrance broadens into a gallery; the back-entrance 
tapers into a funnel-neck. It is somewhat the same 
construction as that of the Labyrinth web. Even the 
labyrinth is repeated, for in front of the bell-shaped 
mouth is a tangle of threads. The Spider has her 
pattern by heart, and uses it on all occasions. 

This palace of silk is a guard-house. Behind the 
soft, milky, partly transparent wall glimmers the 
egg-casket, its shape vaguely suggesting the star of 
some order of knighthood. It is a large pocket, of 
a splendid dead-white, with pillars on every side 
which keep it motionless in the center of the nest. 
There are about ten of these pillars; they are slender 
in the middle and wider at both ends. They form 
corridors around the central room. The mother 
walks gravely to and fro under the arches of these 



THE LABYRINTH SPIDER 263 

corridors, which are like the cloisters of a nunnery; 
she stops first here, then there; she listens to all that 
happens inside the satin wrapper of her egg-wallet. 
I would not disturb her for anything; but I find, from 
nests I have picked up in the fields, that the purse 
contains about a hundred eggs, very pale amber- 
yellow beads. 

When I remove the outer white-satin wall, I come 
upon a kernel of earthy matter, grains of sand mixed 
with the silk. However did they get there? Did 
they soak through the rain-water? No, the wrapper 
is spotless white outside. They have been put there 
by the mother herself. She has built around her eggs, 
to protect them from parasites, a wall composed of 
a great deal of sand and a little silk. 

Inside this is still another silken wrapper, and then 
come the little Spiders, already hatched out and mov- 
ing about in their nursery. 

But, to go back — why does the mother leave her 
fine web when laying-time comes, and make her nest 
so far away? She has her reason, you may depend 
upon it. Her large net, like a sheet, with the laby- 
rinth stretched above, is very conspicuous; parasites 
will not fail to come running at this signal, showing 
up against the green; if her nest is near, they will 
certainly find it; and a strange grub, feasting on a 
hundred new-laid eggs, will ruin her home. So the 
wise Labyrinth Spider shifts her quarters, and goes 
off at night to explore the neighborhood for a 
less dangerous retreat for her coming family. The 
low brambles dragging along the ground, keeping 



264 INSECT ADVENTURES 

their leaves through the winter, and catching the 
dead leaves from the oaks hard by, or rosemary 
tufts, low and bushy, suit her perfectly. In such 
spots I usually find her nest. 

Many Spiders leave their nests after they have 
laid the eggs, but the Labyrinth, like the Crab-spider, 
remains to watch over hers. She does not become 
thin and wither away, like the Crab-spider. She 
keeps her appetite, she is on the lookout for Locusts; 
and so she builds a hunting-box, a tangle of threads, 
on the outside of her nest. 

When she is not hunting, as we have seen, she 
walks the corridors around her eggs, she listens to 
find out If all is well. If I shake the nest at any 
point with a straw, she quickly runs up to inquire 
what Is happening. Probably she keeps off parasites 
in this way. 

The Spider's appetite for Locusts shows that she 
must have more to do. Insects, unlike some human 
beings, eat only that they may work. When I 
watch her, I find out what this work is. For nearly 
another month, I see her adding layer upon layer 
to the walls of her nest. These were at first semi- 
transparent; they become thick and opaque. This Is 
why the Spider eats, so that she may fill her silk- 
glands and make a thick wrapper for her nest. 

About the middle of September the little Spiders 
come out of their eggs, but they do not leave their 
house, where they are to spend the winter packed in 
soft wadding. The mother continues to watch and 
spin, but she grows less active from day to day. 



THE LABYRINTH SPIDER 265 

She eats fewer Locusts; she sometimes scorns those 
whom I myself entangle in her trap. But for four or 
five months longer she keeps on making her inspec- 
tion-rounds of her egg-casket, happy at hearing the 
new-born Spiders swarming inside. At last, when 
October ends, she clutches her children's nursery and 
dies. She has done all that a mother's devotion can 
do; the special Providence that watches over tiny 
animals will do the rest. When spring comes, the 
youngsters will come out of their snug homes and 
scatter all over the neighborhood on their floating 
threads, like the little Crab-spiders you have read 
about. 




CHAPTER XXIV 



THE BUILDING OF A SPIDER's WEB 



THE smallest garden contains the Garden Spi- 
ders, all clever weavers. 

Let us go every evening, step by step, from one 
border of tall rosemaries to the next. Should things 
move too slowly, we will sit down at the foot of the 
shrubs, where the light falls favorably, and watch 
with unwearying attention. Let us give ourselves a 
title, ^'Inspector of Spiders' Webs !" There are not 
many people In that profession, and we shan't make 
any money by It; but never mind, we shall learn some 
very interesting things. 

The Spiders I watch are young ones, much slen- 
derer than they will be In the late autumn. They 
work by day, work even In the sun, whereas the 
old ones weave only at night. Work starts In July, 
a couple of hours before sunset. 

266 



BUILDING OF A SPIDER^S WEB 267 

The spinstresses of my inclosures then leave their 
daytime hiding-places, choose their posts and begin 
to spin, one here, another there. There are many of 
them; we can choose where we please. Let us stop 
In front of this one, whom we surprise in the act of 
laying the foundations of her web. She runs about 
the rosemary hedge, from the tip of one branch to 
another, within the limits of some eighteen inches. 
Gradually, she puts a thread in position, drawing it 
from her body with the combs attached to her hind- 
legs. She comes and goes impetuously, as though at 
random; she goes up, comes down, goes up again, 
dives down again and each time strengthens the 
points of contact with threads distributed here and 
there. The result is a sort of frame. The shapeless 
structure is what she wishes ; it marks out a flat, free, 
and perpendicular space. This is all that is necessary. 

A special thread, the foundation of the stronger 
net which will be built later, is stretched across the 
area of the other. It can be told from the others by 
its isolation, its position at a distance from any twig 
that might interfere with its swaying length. It 
never fails to have, in the middle, a thick white point, 
formed of a little silk cushion. 

The time has come to weave the hunting-snare. 
The Spider starts from the center, which bears the 
white signpost, and, running along the cross-thread, 
hurriedly reaches the circumference, that is to say, 
the irregular frame inclosing the free space. Still 
with the same sudden movement, she rushes from the 
outside to the center; she starts again backwards and 



268 



INSECT ADVENTURES 




forwards, makes for the right, the left, the top, the 
bottom; she hoists herself up, dives down, climbs up 
again, runs down and always returns to the central 
landmark by roads that slant In the most unexpected 
manner. Each time a radius or spoke is laid, here, 
there, or elsewhere. In what looks like mad disorder. 
Any one looking at the finished web, so neat and 
regular In appearance, would think that the Spider 
laid the spokes In an orderly fashion, one after the 
other. She does nothing of the sort, but she knows 
what she is about, all the same. After setting a few 
spokes in one direction, the Spider runs across to the 
other side to draw some in the opposite direction. 



BUILDING OF A SPIDER'S WEB 269 

These sudden changes have a reason; they show us 
how clever the Spider is In her business. If she 
began by laying all the spokes on one side, she would 
pull the web out of shape or even destroy it. She 
must put some on the other side to balance. She is 
a past mistress of the secrets of rope-building, with- 
out serving an apprenticeship. 

One would think that this interrupted and ap- 
parently disordered labor must result in a confused 
piece of work. Wrong: the rays are equidistant and 
form a beautifully regular circle. Their number is 
a characteristic mark of the different species. The 
Angular Epeira places twenty-one in her web, the 
Banded Epeira thirty-two, the Silky Epeira forty- 
two. These numbers are not absolutely fixed; but 
the variation Is very slight. 

Now which of us would undertake, offhand, with- 
out much preliminary experiment and without meas- 
uring-Instruments, to divide a circle into a given 
quantity of sectors or parts of equal width? The 
Garden Spider, though weighted with a wallet and 
tottering on threads shaken by the wind, performs 
the delicate division without stopping to think. She 
achieves It by a method which seems mad according 
to our notions of geometry. Out of disorder she 
brings order. We are amazed at the result obtained. 
How does this Spider come to succeed with her dif- 
ficult problem, so strangely managed? I am still 
asking myself the question. 

The laying of the radii or spokes is finished. The 
Spider takes her place In the center, on the little 



270 INSECT ADVENTURES 

cushion. Stationed on this support, she slowly turns 
round and round. She is engaged on a delicate piece 
of work. With an extremely thin thread, she de- 
scribes from spoke to spoke, starting from the center, 
a spiral line with very close coils. This is the center 
of the web. I will call it the "resting-floor." 

The thread now becomes thicker. The first could 
hardly be seen; the second Is plainly visible. The 
Spider shifts her position with great slanting strides, 
turns a few times, moving farther and farther from 
the center, fixes her line each time to the spoke which 
she crosses, and at last comes to a stop at the lower 
edge of the frame. She has described a spiral with 
coils of rapidly-Increasing width. The average dis- 
tance between the coils, even in the webs of the 
young Spiders, Is about one third of an inch. 

This spiral is not a curved line. All curves are 
banished from the Spiders' work; nothing Is used 
but the straight line and Its combinations. This line 
forms the cross-bars, or supporting rungs, connect- 
ing the spokes, or radii. 

All this Is but a support for the snaring-web. 
Clinging on the one hand to the radii, on the other 
to the cross-bars, the Spider covers the same ground 
as when laying the first spiral, but In the opposite 
direction: formerly, she moved away from the 
center; now she moves towards It and with closer 
and more numerous circles. She starts from the end 
of the first spiral, near the outside of the web. 

What follows Is hard to observe, for the move- 
ments are very quick and jerky, consisting of a series 



BUILDING OF A SPIDER'S WEB 271 

of sudden little rushes, sways, and bends that be- 
wilder the eye. The two hind-legs, the weaving im- 
plements, keep going constantly. One draws out the 
thread from the spinneret, and passes it to the other, 
which lays it on the radius. As soon as the radius is 
touched, the thread sticks to it by its own glue. 

The Spider, without a stop of any kind, turns and 
turns and turns, drawing nearer to the center and 
always fixing her thread at each spoke which she 
crosses. At last, at some distance from the center, 
on the edge of what I have called the resting-floor, 
the Spider suddenly ends her spiral. She next eats 
the little cushion in the center, which is a mat of 




272 



INSECT ADVENTURES 



ends of saved silk. She does this to economize silk, 
for after she has eaten it the cushion will be turned 
into silk for the next web she spins. 

Two Spiders, the Banded and the Silky, sign their 
work by laying a broad white ribbon in a thick zig- 
zag from the center to the lower edge of the web. 
Sometimes they put a second band of the same shape, 
but a little shorter, opposite the first, on the upper 
part of the web. 




THE STICKY SNARE 

The spiral part of the Garden Spider's web is a 
wonderful contrivance. The thread that forms it 
may be seen with the naked eye to be different from 
that of the framework and the spokes. It glitters in 
the sun, and looks as though it were knotted. I can- 
not examine it through the microscope outdoors be- 
cause the web shakes so, but by passing a sheet of 
glass under the web and lifting it I can take away a 
few pieces of thread to study. The microscope now 
shows me an astounding sight. 

Those threads, so slender as to be almost invisible. 



BUILDING OF A SPIDER'S WEB 273 

are very closely twisted twine, something like the 
gold cord of officers' sword-knots. Moreover, they 
are hollow. They contain a sticky moisture resem- 
bling a strong solution of gum arabic. I can see it 
trickling from the broken ends. This moisture must 
ooze through the threads, making them sticky. 
Indeed, they are sticky. When I lay a straw flat 
upon them, it adheres at once. We see now that the 
Garden Spider hunts, not with springs, but with 
sticky snares that catch everything, down to the dan- 
delion-plume that barely brushes against the web. 
Nevertheless, the Spider herself is not caught in her 
own snare. Why? 

For one thing, she spends most of her time on her 
resting-floor in the middle of the web, which the 
spiral does not enter. The resting-floor is not at 
all sticky, as I find when I pass a straw against it. 
But sometimes when a victim is caught, perhaps right 
at the end of the web, the Spider has to rush up 
quickly to bind it and overcome its attempts to free 
Itself. She seems to be able to walk upon her net- 
work perfectly well then. Has she something on her 
feet which makes them slip over the glue ? Has she 
perhaps oiled them? Oil, you know, is the best 
thing to prevent surfaces from sticking. 

I pull out the leg of a live Spider and put it to 
soak for an hour in disulphide of carbon, which dis- 
solves fat. I wash it carefully with a brush dipped 
In the same fluid. When the washing Is finished, the 
leg sticks to the spiral of the web I We see now that 
the Spider varnishes herself with a special sweat so 



274 INSECT ADVENTURES 

that she can go on any part of her web without 
difficulty. However, she does not wish to remain on 
the spiral too long, or the oil might wear away, so 
most of the time she stays on her safe resting-floor. 

This spiral thread of the Spider's is very quick to 
absorb moisture, as I find out by experiment. For 
this reason the Garden Spiders, when they weave 
their webs in the early morning, leave that part of 
the work unfinished, if the air turns misty. They 
build the general framework, they lay the spokes, 
they make the resting-floor, for all these parts are 
not affected by excess moisture; but they are very 
careful not to work at the sticky spiral, which, if 
soaked by the fog, would dissolve into sticky threads 
and lose Its usefulness by being wet. The net that 
was started will be finished to-morrow. If the weather 
Is right. But on hot days this property of the spiral 
is a fine thing; it does not dry up, but absorbs all the 
moisture In the atmosphere and remains, at the most 
scorching times of day, supple, elastic, and more and 
more sticky. What bird-catcher could compete with 
the Garden Spider in the art of laying snares? And 
all this Industry and cunning for the capture of a 
Moth! 

Then, too, what a passion the Spider has for pro- 
duction. I calculated that, in one sitting, each time 
that she remakes her web, the Angular Spider pro- 
duces some twenty yards of gummy thread. The more 
skillful Silky Spider produces thirty. Well, during 
two months, the Angular Spider, my neighbor, re- 
newed her snare nearly every evening. During that 



BUILDING OF A SPIDER'S WEB 275 

time she manufactured something like three quarters 
of a mile of this tubular thread, rolled Into a tight 
twist and bulging with glue. 

We cannot but wonder how she ever carries so 
much In her little body, how she manages to twist 
her silk Into this tube, how she fills It with glue ! 
And how does she first turn out plain threads, then 
russet foam, for her nest, then black stripes to adorn 
the nest? I see the results, but I cannot understand 
the working of her factory. 




CHAPTER XXV 

THE GEOMETRY OF THE SPIDER's WEB 

[This chapter, one of the most wonderful in 
Fabre's books, is included in a simplified form in 
this volume, on account of its interest to such younger 
readers as have studied geometry.] 



WHEN we look at the webs of the Garden 
Spiders, especially those of the Silky Spider 
and the Banded Spider, we notice first that the spokes 
or radii are equally spaced; the angles formed by 
each consecutive pair are of the same value ; and this 
in spite of their number, which in the webs of the 
Silky Spider sometimes exceeds forty. We know in 
what a strange way the Spider weaves her web and 
divides the area of the web into a large number of 
equal parts or sectors, a number which is almost al- 
ways the same in the work of each species of Spider. 

276 



GEOMETRY OF SPIDER'S WEB 277 

The Spider darts here and there when .laying her 
spokes as if she had no plan, and this irresponsible 
way of working produces a beautiful web like the 
rose-window in a church, a web which no designer 
could have drawn better with compasses. 

We shall also notice that, in each sector, the vari- 
ous chords, parts of the angular spiral, are parallel 
to one another and gradually draw closer together 
as they near the center. With the two radiating 
lines that frame them they form obtuse angles on 
one side and acute angles on the other; and these 
angles remain constant in the same sector, because 
the chords are parallel. 

There is more than this: these same angles, the 
obtuse as well as the acute, do not alter in value, 
from one sector to another, as far as the eye can 
judge. Taken as a whole, therefore, the spiral con- 
sists of a series of cross-bars intersecting the several 
radiating lines obliquely at angles of equal value 

By this characteristic we recognize what geometri- 
cians have named the ^'logarithmic spiral." It is 
famous in science. The logarithmic spiral describes 
an endless number of circuits around its pole, to 
which it constantly draws nearer without ever being 
able to reach it. We could not see such a line, the 
whole of it, even with our best philosophical instru- 
ments. It exists only in the imagination of scientists. 
But the Spider knows it, and winds her spiral in the 
same way, and very accurately at that. 

Another property of this spiral is that if one in 
imagination winds a flexible thread around it, then 



278 INSECT ADVENTURES 

unwinds the thread, keeping it taut the while, its 
free end will describe a spiral similar at all points 
to the original. The curve will merely have changed 
places. Jacques Bernoullli, the professor of mathe- 
matics who discovered this magnificent theorem, had 
engraved on his tomb, as one of his proudest titles 
to fame, the spiral and its double, made by the un- 
winding of the thread. Written underneath it was 
the sentence : Eadem miitata resurgo. "I rise again 
like unto myself." It was a splendid flight of fancy 
which showed his belief In immortality. 

Now is this logarithmic spiral, with Its curious 
properties, merely an idea of the geometricians? Is 
it a mere dream, an abstract riddle? 

No, it Is a reality in the service of life, a method 
of construction often employed by animals in their 
architecture. The Mollusk never makes its shell 
without reference to the scientific curve. The first- 
born of the species knew it and put It into practice; 
it was as perfect in the dawn of creation as it can be 
to-day. 

There are perfect examples of this spiral found in 
the shells of fossils. To this day, the last represen- 
tative of an ancient tribe, the Nautilus of the 
Southern Seas, remains faithful to the old design, 
and still whirls its spiral logarithmically, as did its 
ancestors In the earliest ages of the world's existence. 
Even in the stagnant waters of our grassy ditches, a 
tiny Shellfish, no bigger than a duckweed, rolls its 
shell In the same manner. The common snail-shell 
is constructed according to logarithmic laws. 



GEOMETRY OF SPIDER'S WEB 279 




Where do these creatures pick up this science? 
We are told that the Mollusk is descended from the 
Worm. One day the Worm, rendered frisky by the 
sun, brandished its tail and twisted it into a cork- 
screw for sheer glee. There and then the plan of the 
future spiral shell was discovered. 

This is what is taught quite seriously, in these 
days, as the very last word in science. But the 
Spider will have none of this theory. For she is not 
related to the Worm ; and yet she is familiar with the 
logarithmic spiral and uses it in her web, in a simpler 
form. The Mollusk has years in which to build her 



2 So INSECT ADVENTURES 

spiral, so she makes it very perfectly. The Spider 
has only an hour at the most to spread her net, so 
she makes only a skeleton of the curve; but she 
knows the same line dear to the Snail. What guides 
her? Nothing but an inborn skill, whose effects the 
animal is no more able to control than the flower is 
able to control the arrangement of its petals and 
stamens. The Spider practices higher geometry 
without knowing or caring. The thing works of 
itself and takes its way from an instinct imposed 
upon creation at the start. 

The stone thrown by the hand returns to earth 
describing a certain curve; the dead leaf torn and 
wafted away by a breath of wind makes its journey 
from the tree to the ground with a similar curve. 
The curve is known to science and is called the 
"parabola." 

The geometricians speculate still more about this 
curve ; they imagine it rolling on an indefinite straight 
line and ask what course the focus of the curve fol- 
lows. The answer comes that the focus of the par- 
abola describes a "catenary," a line whose algebraic 
symbol is so complicated that a numeral will not ex- 
press it. The nearest it can get is this terrible sum : 

I I I I I 

i+ — + — + + + • Hhetc. 

I 1.2 1.2.3 I-2.3-4 1-2.3.4.5 

The geometricians do not attempt to refer to it by 
this number ; they give it a letter, e. 



GEOMETRY OF SPIDER'S WEB 281 











Is this line imaginary? Not at all; you may see 
the catenary frequently. It is the shape taken by a 
flexible cord when held at each end and relaxed; it 
is the line that governs the shape of a sail filled out 
by the wind. All this answers to the number t\ 



282 INSECT ADVENTURES 

What a quantity of abstruse science for a bit of 
string! Let us not be surprised. A pellet of shot 
swinging at the end of a thread, a drop of dew. 
trickling down a straw, a splash of water rippling 
under the kisses of the air, a mere trifle, after all, 
becomes tremendously complicated when we wish to 
examine it with the eye of calculation. We need the 
club of Hercules to crush a fly. 

Our methods of mathematical investigation are 
certainly ingenious; we cannot too much admire the 
mighty brains that have invented them ; but how slow 
and laborious they seem when compared with the 
smallest actual things ! Shall we never be able to 
inquire into reality in a simpler fashion? Shall we 
be intelligent enough some day to do without all 
these heavy formulae? Why not? 

Here we have the magic number e reappearing, 
written on a Spider's thread. On a misty morning 
the sticky threads are laden with tiny drops, and, 
bending under the burden, have become so many 
catenaries, so many chains of limpid gems, graceful 
chaplets arranged in exquisite order and following 
the curve of a swing. If the sun pierce the mist, the 
whole lights up with rainbow-colored fires and be- 
comes a dazzling cluster of diamonds. The number 
e Is In its glory. 

Geometry, that Is to say, the science of harmony 
in space, rules over everything. We find It in the 
arrangement of the scales of a fir-cone, as in the 
arrangement of a Spider's sticky snare; we find It in 
the spiral of a snail-shell. In the chaplet of a Spider's 



GEOMETRY OF SPIDER'S WEB 283 

thread, as In the orbit of a planet; it is everywhere, 
as perfect in the world of atoms as in the world of 
immensities. 

And this universal geometry tells us of a Uni- 
versal Geometrician, whose divine compass has 
measured all things. I prefer that, as an explanation 
of the logarithmic curve of the Nautilus and the 
Garden Spiders, to the Worm screwing up the tip of 
its tail. It may not perhaps be in agreement with 
some latter-day teaching, but it takes a loftier flight. 



INDEX 

Angular Spider, web of, 269, Birds, sense of direction of, 

274-275 57-58 

Ants, battle between Red and Bluebottle Flies, as scavengers, 
Black, 59-60 134 

habits of Red, or Amazon Bumble-bee, prey of Tarantula, 

58-59 211-212 

sense of direction of, 60-61 Butterfly, hunted by Banded 

Spider, 2cxd 



Banded Spider, eggs and young 
of, 207-208 

hunting habits and prey of, 
199-203 

nest of, 203-206 

telegraph wire of, 242-247 
Bees, Carpenter, prey of Taran- 
tula, 214-215 

Cotton, 85-88 

Dioxys, 47 

doorkeeping, 69-77 

Gnats as enemies of, 67-69 

home-finding instinct of, 49- 
50 

Leaf-cutting, 47, 78-84, 86 

Mason, 37-46 

Osmia, 47 

Resin, 89-92 

victims of Crab-spider, 248- 
249 

Zebra, 62-77 
Beetles, Hoplia, 192 

Truffle-hunting, 171-176 

usefulness of, about Bees' 
houses, 47-48 



Cabbage-caterpillars, 161-166 
Caddis-worms, 17 

study of, 31-32 

use of defensive sheath by, 

33-34 
viewed as insect submarine, 

35-36 
Carpenter-bee, fight between 

Tarantula and, 214-215 
Caterpillars, Cabbage, 161-166 
Pine, 135-160 

prey of Hairy Sand-wasp, 95- 
105 
Cats, home-finding instinct of, 

52-57 

study of, 51-52 
Clotho Spider, food of, 239 

habits of, 239-241 

home of, 236-239 

origin of name, 236 
Crab-spider, described, 249-250 

eggs of, 251-252 

hunting practices of, 248-249 

nest of, 251-252 

young of, 253-256 



285 



286 



INDEX 



Crickets, prey of Yellow-winged 
Wasps, 106-112 

Dioxys-bee, 47 

Dog, truffle-hunting by, 171-173 
Doorkeeping Bees, 69-77 
Dragon-flies, 18 

prey of Banded Spider, 200 

Flesh-flies, Gray, as scavengers, 

134 
Flies, as prey of Wasps, 113-118 
Bombylii, as parasites, 130- 

131 
scavenger v/ork done by, 133- 

134 
Wasps preyed on by, 120-133, 

131 

Gad-flies, hunted by Wasps, 

113-118 
Geometry of Spider's web, 276- 

283 
Glass pond, described, 28-30 
Gnats, as enemies of Bees, 67- 

69 
Cabbage-caterpillar victim of, 

165-166 
Grasshoppers, prey of Banded 

Spider, 200 
prey of Tarantula, 213 
Gray Worm, hunting of, by 

Hairy Sand-wasp, 95-105 
Great Peacock Moth, 167-170 
Greenbottle Flies, as scaven- 
gers, 133-134 

Honey, of Cotton-bees, 88 
of Mason-bees, 37-38 



Instinct in animals compared 
with genius in men, 197-198 

Labyrinth Spider, habits of, 
264-265 
nest of, 260-264 
web of, 259-260 
young of, 264-265 
Leeches, in pond, 18 
Locust, prey of Banded Spider, 
201-203 

Microgaster, enemy of Cabbage- 
caterpillar, 165-166 

Midge, Cabbage-caterpillar 
preyed on by, 165-166 

Mole, effect of Tarantula's poi- 
son on, 217-218 

Mollusk, curve of shell of, 278- 
280 

Mosquitoes, grubs of, 18 

Moths, Great Peacock, 167-170 
Pine, 157-160 

Nautilus, curve of shell of, 278- 

280 
Newt, orange-bellied, in pond, 

17 

Parasites, insect, 125-132 
Pigeons, home-finding instinct 

of, 57 
Pine Caterpillars, 135-160 

cocoons and moths of, 157-160 

eggs of, 136-138 

habits of, 141 -144 

procession habit of, 145-153 

weather prophesied by, 154- 
156 

winter homes of, 141 

young of, 138-140 



INDEX 



287 



Pond, studies in a, 17-30 
Pond-skaters, 17 
Processionaries, Pine Caterpil- 
lars called, 136 
study of, 145-153 



flight of young, 232-235 
food of young, 228-232 
home of, 210-21 1 
hunting methods of, 211-214, 

218-220 
poison of, 216-218 



River-snails, found in pond, 18 Truffle-hunters, 171-176 



Scavengers, Flies as, 133-134 
School, account of early, 182-194 
Shellfish, varieties of, in pond, 

18 
Silky Spider, telegraph wire of, 

242-247 
Snails, pond and river, 18 
Sparrow, effect of Tarantula's 

poison on, 216-217 
Spiders, Angular, 269 

Banded, 199-208, 269 

Bird, 257, 258 

Clotho, 236-241 

Crab, 248-256 

Garden, 272 

Labyrinth, 257-265 

poisonous qualities of, 209 

Silky, 269 

Tarantula, 209-235 

telegraph wire of, 242-247 

Water, 258 

web building by, 266-283 
Stelis-wasp, as enemy of Ma- 
son-bee, 43-44 

Tadpoles, in pond, 17, 22 
Tarantula, American, 257, 258 

Black-bellied, 210 

description of, 210 

eggs and young of, 221-232 

fight with Carpenter-bee de- 
scribed, 214-215 



Wasps, Fly-hunting, 113-124 

Golden, as parasites, 128-130 

Hairy Sand, 93-105 

hunting of Crickets by Yel- 
low-winged, 106-112 

hunting practices contrasted 
with Tarantula's, 218 

Mutilla, 126-128 

preyed on by Flies, 120-123 

Stelis, as enemies of Mason- 
bee, 43-44 
Water-beetles, in pond, 17 

escape of Caddis-worms from, 

33-34 

Water-boatmen, 18 

Water-scorpions, 18 

Weather prophets. Pine Cater- 
pillars as, 154-156 

Web, building of Spider's, 266- 
275 
geometry of Spider's, 276-283 

Weeds, decomposition of, in 
stagnant water, 29-30 

Whirligigs, in pond, 17 

Zebra Bees, appearance of, 62 
doorkeeping by, described, 69- 

77 
eggs and young of, 66-67, 69- 

70 
Gnat enemy of, 67-69 
homes of, 62-65 



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